Desert Song

by Laekan Zea Kemp (Author) Beatriz Gutiérrez Hernández (Illustrator)

Reading Level: 2nd − 3rd Grade

A family joins the music of the Texas desert night in this tale of tradition and memory from Pura Belpré Honor author Laekan Zea Kemp.

It starts with a soft tapping,
Uncle Eduardo drumming his
hands against his dusty jeans.


As the blush of sunset gives way to night in the desert, coyotes, cicadas, and barn owls emerge, each calling out to the moon. Watching from their porch, the family joins the song. One by one, each relative offers their drums, flute, maracas, strings, and voices. 

They sing with the insects, birds, snakes and toads; and they sing with their ancestors, an audience glittering in the stars overhead. With each strum of passed-down instruments, memories renew, and those gone are alive and near again.

Desert Song hums and chimes with all the music a front porch and the desert beyond can hold. Pura Belpré Honor author Laekan Zea Kemp’s masterfully stirring text dances through Beatriz Gutierrez Hernandez’s enchanting and dynamic artwork. Readers will be left with the soothing sense that when creativity flourishes, the past is never out of reach, and the bonds that matter never break.

Simultaneously published in Spanish as Canción del desierto.

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Hardcover
$18.99

Kirkus

Starred Review

Kemp's poetic text conveys the desert sky's magnificence. . . Gutiérrez Hernández's delicately stylized illustrations excel. . . Perfectly orchestrated: brava!.

None

Starred Review

A gorgeous, intergenerational reflection on being mindful of the present while remembering and honoring loved ones from the past.

Publishers Weekly

Starred Review

A desert sunset cues a large family to make music alongside "the coyotes, the cicadas, / and the giant barn owls....// a chorus in need of a band," in this lyrical picture book written by Zea Kemp (A Crown for Corina). As a rich, warm sunset palette slowly gives way to the deep, beautiful blues of nighttime, Uncle Eduardo drums his hands on his jeans, Aunt Ofelia plays the flute, and other family members take up percussion and stringed instruments, until, "when my mother opens her mouth to sing, / a hush falls over the desert." After the moon rises and Mami sings of memory, the child's father acknowledges that the Latinx-cued family plays "your great-great-grandfather's vihuela and my godmother's ocarina. To remind us that they're still alive between the notes. That when we sing to them, they're listening." Amid naïf-style scenes of the family collaborating with each other and the natural world, digitally finished acrylic gouache and colored pencil illustrations from Gutiérrez Hernández (Benito Juárez Fights for Justice) visualize the child's forebears in this work about connection that ends with "the glittering sky overhead, an audience of our ancestors"--and a development that sounds like applause. Creators' notes conclude. Ages 4-8. (June)

Copyright 2024 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.

Review quotes



Laekan Zea Kemp
Laekan Zea Kemp is the Pura Belpré Honor author of Somewhere Between Bitter and Sweet and other young adult novels, as well as a middle grade series and picture books. She lives in Austin, Texas. Laekan invites you to visit her at laekanzeakemp.com or follow her on social media @LaekanZeaKemp.
Classification
-
ISBN-13
9780823453924
Lexile Measure
-
Guided Reading Level
-
Publisher
Neal Porter Books
Publication date
June 04, 2024
Series
-
BISAC categories
JUV010000 - Juvenile Fiction | Bedtime & Dreams
JUV031040 - Juvenile Fiction | Performing Arts | Music
JUV011030 - Juvenile Fiction | People & Places | United States - Hispanic & Latino
Library of Congress categories
Animals
Picture books
Family life
Music
Singing
Desert

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