The Horn Book Guide

PICTURE BOOKS

de la Peña, Matt

Last Stop on Market Street

32 pp. | Putnam | January, 2015 | Trade ISBN 978-0-399-25774-2 $16.99

(1) K-3 Illustrated by Christian Robinson. CJ, a young black boy, has a flurry of questions for his grandmother one rainy day. "How come we always gotta go here after church?" "Here" is a soup kitchen, where they work every Sunday. Nana has bottomless look-on-the-sunny-side answers, but she isn't dispensing bromides; the exquisitely composed collage illustrations showing a glamour-free urban setting forbid a glib reading. A quietly remarkable book.

Reviewer: Nell Beram | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2015