What do you know?

Authors and sisters Girmay and Fields give voice to a variety of beings, imagining love itself asking, "What do you know?" and listening carefully to the response. The question is asked of a well, bees, and a forest, among other entities. "When love comes to the farmers and asks,/ What do you know," one spread reads, a farmer responds: "I know work and weather/ and the hands of the sun and the rain." In softly tinted art with the feel of sketchbook pages, a brown-skinned farmer carries heavy baskets across her shoulders. On another spread, laundry waves from lines strung between brick buildings, and a historian answers, "I know history speaks when we listen,/ for the quietest stories among the stories." Fields draws as if setting down memories or dreams, with forms that repeat: people and birds with downcast gazes, bears with great claws, landscapes that undulate like ocean waves. Employing incantatory lines that conjure flame-like warmth and reverence, Girmay and Fields acknowledge the kind of knowing that's older than books. Ages 7--up. (June)

Love examines the natural world in all its varied capacities. This lyrical exploration of the world, inspired by a poem by Sharon Olds, leans on a repeated refrain in which love asks something (a creature, thing, or idea) what it knows. Honeybees, for instance, know "the hexagon and the color gold." The musings are philosophical, ecological, poetic, and even sociological in nature: A historian, for instance, "knows history speaks when we listen for the quietest stories among the stories." Many spreads focus on the natural world and the animals in it, but readers also hear from farmers (including, refreshingly, a brown-skinned female farmer) and courage, which knows "the daily work of keeping on." Things even take a cosmological turn when readers hear from the Seven Sisters, who know "the language of light." There are references to "the elders" and "ancestors," and many of these spreads let Mother Nature take the focus; humans (most are Black or brown skinned) are part of the land, not creatures who lord over it. Both text and art seem intentionally open-ended, leaving space for readers to extend meaning in their own ways, making it a fitting writing prompt for students (of all ages). Slightly muted, earth-toned illustrations feature flowing lines--from the multicolored furrows of a farmer's plowed field to the rays of light in a starry night sky--that compel page turns. A contemplative, enigmatic exploration of life on planet Earth. (Picture book. 5-12) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.