Karen Leggett Abouraya
With her new picture book, Karen Leggett Abouraya wanted to highlight an experience common to her family — and that of many Americans.
“Zamzam” (Reycraft, 2024, ages 2-7, $9.95) “celebrates the similarities in all our cultures,” said Abouraya, who lives in Rockville, Maryland. And it features “the joy and richness of having multiple cultures in a single family or community.”
The title character is a little boy who has grandparents in Alexandria, Egypt, and New York City. In the story, the first-person narrator shares his observations and experiences as he visits their respective cities. The lively text hews to his perspective in fresh, captivating ways. For example, in Egypt, he rides a “humpy-lumpy” camel that drinks his soda. And he’s thankful that his carousel horse in Central Park refrains from doing the same!
Susan L. Roth, the illustrator for Abouraya’s previous two books, returns with her signature stunning collage art. Roth uses paper of different hues and textures and found objects from her travels throughout the world, including Egypt. Readers will have fun spotting Zamzam’s baby picture, which is a photo of Abouraya and her young grandson, the inspiration for the book. Like the character, he has grandparents from Egypt and the United States.
Abouraya is already working on a sequel, to the delight of her young muse, who has taken an active interest in the book-making process. Following a recent family trip to Egypt, he sat down and wrote his own story about his adventures.
As a child in Akron, Ohio, Abouraya reveled in a home with “books in every room,” she said in a recent interview. Her belief that all young people should have access to intellectually enriching materials now fuels her advocacy work for literacy, through the local Turning the Page and Summer Fun Stuff programs, and the disability community in Montgomery County.
For a writer so engaged with the world, Abouraya said that she hopes her books “bring attention to the importance of young people speaking up and taking pride in their heritage and beliefs.”
Caroline Brewer
Washingtonian Caroline Brewer honors the natural world and a national hero in “Harriet Tubman, Force of Nature: A Biography in Poems” (What on Earth Books, 2025, ages 7-11, $18.99).
Brewer’s vivid poems and richly textured collage illustrations plumb Tubman’s deep connection to nature. Her knowledge enabled her escape from enslavement in Maryland, through unknown, night-dark woods and fields, to freedom in Philadelphia. And it helped her to guide many enslaved people successfully through the Underground Railroad.
To bring to light this little-explored aspect of Tubman’s life, Brewer did extensive research. She especially enjoyed “learning how nature played such a decisive role in how Harriet saw herself — born as free as the eagle,” said Brewer in a recent interview. She had “dreams of herself in flight, just like birds, and she made those dreams come true.”
Brewer hopes that the book will “inspire children to be more curious, adventurous and comfortable outdoors, and learn how to better protect themselves and the environment.”
Growing up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Brewer’s first writings, she said, were poems to her mother on birthdays and Mother’s Day. Her passion for reading and writing intensified when her older sister introduced her to the work of Maya Angelou.
Brewer’s respect for the natural world is deeply entwined with her longtime work in literacy and environmental education. Her experience as a reading specialist and chair of the Taking Nature Black Conference led her to found Nature-Wise four years ago. Through books and activities, this training program helps teachers, librarians and students achieve a greater “understanding of our oneness with nature,” she said.
She believes that “having the courage to discuss so-called difficult, yet important issues, is critical to developing healthy identities in children.” Doing so in a way that engages young people has been a thread through all her books.
Barbara Carroll Roberts
“The most enjoyable part of writing fiction, to me, is when the characters start to really gel, and I begin to hear their individual voices,” said Barbara Carroll Roberts, who lives in Oakton, Virginia.
For her new novel “The Metamorphosis of Bunny Baxter” (Holiday House, 2025, ages 10-14, $18.99), the title character “gelled” into an engaging first-person narrator with a distinct voice and intriguing interest. Bunny is fascinated by insects and worried by their dwindling numbers, which mirrors scientific concern worldwide. She’s also a socially anxious kid trying to navigate a new school.
Roberts also wanted to feature an aspect of her character that’s all but invisible in children’s books. Bunny was adopted.
A fellow writer had once mentioned the tendency of the very few books about adopted children to center on an “issue directly related to adoption, such as the character searching for a birth parent,” said Roberts. This writer, who had been adopted into her family and had adopted her own children, felt that youngsters who had been adopted needed books that better reflected their many, varied experiences.
Since Roberts and her husband had adopted one of their children, she decided to try writing such a book.
Roberts also drew on her awareness of environmental issues as she developed Bunny’s character. She remembers the northern California of her childhood during the 1960s and 1970s. This was before the Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, she said. This was back when breathing the Los Angeles smog was “equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes every day, when some rivers were so polluted, they caught fire.”
She continued: “Restoring and protecting the health of our planet has always been important to me.”
To this end, Roberts monitors the environmental impact of her daily activities. She gardens with native plants and avoids use of pesticides. She supports the work of several environmental organizations, especially the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. Their publications, she said, were key to her research for Bunny’s story, which she hopes “will inspire a love of our natural world in young readers.”
Mary Quattlebaum lives in Washington, DC, and is the author of 30 award-winning children’s books, most recently” Queen Elizabeth II,” an early reader biography. She teaches in the graduate program in writing for children at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, writes frequently for the Washington Post and is a popular school and conference speaker. For more information, visit https://maryquattlebaum.com.
Mary Quattlebaum lives in Washington, D.C. and is the author of 30 award-winning children’s books, most recently Queen Elizabeth II, an early reader biography. She teaches in the graduate program in writing for children at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, writes frequently for The Washington Post and is a popular school and conference speaker. maryquattlebaum.com
Mary Quattlebaum lives in Washington, D.C. and is the author of 30 award-winning children’s books, most recently Queen Elizabeth II, an early reader biography. She teaches in the graduate program in writing for children at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, writes frequently for The Washington Post and is a popular school and conference speaker. maryquattlebaum.com
