• Age: 4 to 8
• Grade: p to 3

Caldecott Honor Book
Today Show Best Book for the Holidays
ALA Notable Book for All Ages
ALSC Notable Children's Book
NCTE Notable Poetry Book
Evanston Public Library's Top 100 Great Book for Kids
Nerdy Award Winner for Single Poem Picture Book
Bank Street Best Books of the Year
In this powerful, affirming poem by award-winning author Zetta Elliott, a Black child explores his shifting emotions throughout the year.
There is a place inside of me
a space deep down inside of me
where all my feelings hide.
Summertime is filled with joy—skateboarding and playing basketball—until his community is deeply wounded by a police shooting. As fall turns to winter and then spring, fear grows into anger, then pride and peace.
In her stunning debut, illustrator Noa Denmon articulates the depth and nuances of a child’s experiences following a police shooting—through grief and protests, healing and community—with washes of color as vibrant as his words.
Here is a groundbreaking narrative that can help all readers—children and adults alike—talk about the feelings hiding deep inside each of us.

Born in Canada, Zetta Elliott moved to Brooklyn in 1994 to pursue her PhD in American Studies at NYU. Her poetry has been published in several anthologies, and her plays have been staged in New York, Chicago, and Cleveland. Her essays have appeared in Horn Book Magazine, School Library Journal, and The Huffington Post. Her first picture book, Bird, won the Honor Award in Lee & Low Books' New Voices Contest; it was named Best of 2008 by Kirkus Reviews, a 2009 ALA Notable Children's Book, and BIRD won the Paterson Prize for Books for Young Readers. Elliott's first young adult novel, A Wish After Midnight, has been called "gripping," "a revelation...vivid, violent and impressive history." Ship of Souls was published in February 2012; it was included in Booklist's Top Ten Sci-fi/Fantasy Titles for Youth and was a finalist for the 2013 Phillis Wheatley Award. Her latest novel, THE DEEP, was released in November 2013. She has published several illustrated books under her own imprint, Rosetta Press. She currently lives in Brooklyn.
Learn more at: http://www.zettaelliott.com/

Zetta Elliott's profile page

Noa Denmon's profile page

• Long-listed, Caldecott Honor Book

2021 Caldecott Honor Book
A Today Show Best Book for the Holidays
An ALSC Notable Children's Book
A NCTE Notable Poetry Book
An Evanston Public Library's Great Book for Kids
A Cooperative Children's Book Center List Pick
"A resonant exultation of community and the importance of self-reflection." —Publishers Weekly
"This book delivers positivity, despite the inclusion of police brutality, a Black Lives Matter protest, and a vigil for the dead—all of which affirm the child’s realities . . . A well-crafted, twenty-first-century love poem by two truth-telling Black women artists and activists." —The Horn Book