THE SPARK IN ME

A child abuzz with questions about the natural world finds essential tools for addressing them.

Gifted with a free-floating imagination, the young narrator—who’s depicted with brown skin and multiple long, tight braids—wonders why the starlit night sky is dark, why snow is white even though water is transparent, if it might be possible to walk on the ceiling or sail the seas in a paper boat, and other common conundrums. A teacher’s suggestion that a visit to the library might help answer those questions leads (as it would) to the life-altering revelation that “there’s a name for the spark I feel inside. It’s called physics!” And then, as Tanco’s depictions of the child’s airy visions and ingenious inventions suddenly switch to images of research notebook pages with simple line drawings, so, too, does the narrative turn to basic science notes: on gravity, light absorption and reflection, Archimedes’ principle, and other fundamentals certain to be helpful to young readers prone to generating similar queries and visions of their own. The child’s supportive parents and sibs are likewise brown-skinned; students in a classroom scene are racially diverse.

An inventive way to link posing questions with looking for answers.