All about U.S A look at the lives of 50 real kids from across the United States

Fifty real children, one from each state, describe their families, daily lives, interests, and hopes. Using an intensive selection process involving census records and questionnaires, Lamothe, the author of the similarly themed This Is How We Do It (2017), and writer and designer Volvovski profile 50 children, ages 5 to 11--not as supposed representatives of the states they happen to live in, but of children everywhere in this country. The entries feature half-page summaries of video-chat interviews and painted images of the young people with their homes and families. Seven-year-old Ramon has to keep his Hot Wheels collection in bins in the hallway, since he shares a bedroom in Rhode Island with his mom and sister; 11-year-old Betsy (Alabama) gets in trouble for reading while driving her motorized wheelchair; and while her dads in Wyoming prepare dinner, 6-year-old Charlie talks about her dance classes and how she wants to be an astronaut veterinarian when she grows up. What emerges is a rich, thought-provoking work that proves that despite our differences, there's much that we share. Though acknowledging that multiracial children are overrepresented here (but with some justice, as it reflects a documented trend), the authors finish off with bar graphs showing that overall they are presenting a reasonably accurate demographic picture of young America in all its diversity…while convincingly suggesting that, as they put it, "we have more in common than we may think." Methodical, inspiring, and consistently enlightening. (sources) (Nonfiction. 8-12) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.