Ambitious Girl

PreS-Gr 2—The niece of Vice President—elect Kamala Harris probably knows a thing or two about this topic: A girl can never be too ambitious. A young girl—she is brown-skinned, with black hair, but there is no ethnic background that is not included in the many crowd scenes of this jolly, positive book—infers from the world around her that she is too confident, too ambitious, too loud, too proud, and too confident. The quick moral? Don't let the world judge you—"You tell them who you are." The story is inclusive of all girls and some nonbinary folk in uplifting illustrations that shout the lessons, that "too" is darkly overwhelming, but women before her have opened doors. Here, also, is the quote children everywhere have been learning in this political season—"You may be the first someday, but don't be the last—make space for more!" The colors intensify throughout the story until the resonant end. VERDICT A welcome addition to any library collection; the endpapers full of affirmations would make a wonderful poster for any wall.—Andrea Pavlik, Huntington Public Library, NY

Harris and Valdez's appreciable celebration of female ambition begins with a televised broadcast of a Black female speaker being labeled "too assertive, too persistent, too ambitious, too loud." In Valdez's bright, largely unlined art, a brown-skinned girl, who walks up the street with three older Black women, is not discouraged by what she sees. Though she sometimes hears "you're 'too that' or you're 'too this, ' " her mother explains that historical figures, shown in a navy wash, "have opened so many doors," paving the way for this child's hopes and desires to flourish. The same words once used to criticize the televised woman are seen in a new, positive light by book's end: digital art shows the girl taking a stage of her own, where she proudly exclaims that she, too, is "AMBITIOUS!" Ages 4-8. (Jan.)

"When I learned about the water crisis in my hometown of Flint, I didn't have many young role models who looked like me. But I did what any ambitious girl would do and took that first step. I love that Ambitious Girl will encourage the next generation of young female activists to speak up and not back down."