Bound To Stay Bound

School Library Journal - 09/01/2021 K-Gr 2—Lilly's second picture book is full of warmth, good food, and most importantly, the love of grandparents and extended family. A young girl and her family leave their home in the city after school one Friday and drive for "hours and hours" to visit grandparents in two distinct locales. Traveling first to the mountains of West Virginia, the narrator and her sisters are welcomed late at night to Mamaw and Papaw's house with the greeting of "Let me fix you a plate." After several days in the mountains with her father's white family they travel to Florida where they are greeted by their Spanish-speaking Abuela who invites them in with "Hay comidita adentro. Comense. There's food inside. Come and eat." The warmth and love of the family and their relatives is abundantly clear in colors and lines that evoke emotion and details of the two different cultures that are also similar to one another. The end papers are full of details that invite readers to think about the artifacts that are part of their family's heritage. This title would be an ideal writing or art prompt for students to encourage them to share stories of the cultures that comprise their family. VERDICT With rich sensory details in the text to accompany detailed and inviting illustrations, this title is a wonderful and celebratory addition to all library shelves.—John Scott, Baltimore County P.S. - Copyright 2021 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Booklist - 10/01/2021 *Starred Review* A weeklong family road trip begins with a Friday-evening drive to Dad's parents in West Virginia, where plates of Mamaw's food await the tired travelers. For the next three days, Mamaw's kitchen is the hub of activity for conversation, coffee, and banana pudding. From there, the family to visit Mom's parents and other relatives in Florida. Abuela offers them a midnight feast of tostones, arroz, and flan. The next day they pick oranges, fry corn-flour cakes, and learn some Spanish; evenings are filled with food, drink, and dancing. After a long drive home, the family snacks on midnight waffles before drifting off to sleep. Drawing from her own childhood growing up in a mixed family, Lilly's celebration of kinfolk emphasizes the role food plays in demonstrating love, transmitting culture, and cementing happy memories. The brightly colored illustrations in pen and ink, colored pencil, and marker depict the many and varied personalities in this group and include many setting details, such as Mamaw's cat plates and Abuelo's frog figurines. The endpapers visually encapsulate the story (roads from home to West Virginia in the front, from Florida to home at the back) and several spreads depict activity both inside and outside the house. Pleasingly lyrical and quirky, Lilly demonstrates the lasting potential of the family road trip. - Copyright 2021 Booklist.