Here are 100 books that Sweetest Kulu fans have personally recommended if you like
Sweetest Kulu.
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When I was a kid, I knew that my gender was different. I didn’t feel like a boy or a girl, but I didn’t know the word “nonbinary.” There were no kid’s books about people like me. I grew up with a lot of questions, which drove me to become a doctor of Women’s and Gender Studies and an expert on transgender history. Now I’m passionate about writing the kind of picture books that I needed as a child. If you want the kids in your life to understand transgender identity and feel loved whatever their gender may be, you’ll enjoy the books on my list.
I love lyrical picture books with colorful illustrations. If you do too, you’ll enjoy The Boy & the Bindi. Vivek Shraya tells the story of a boy who wants to wear a bindi, the red dot Southeast Asian women often wear on their foreheads to show where creation began. Instead of chastising him for wanting to do something reserved for women, the boy’s mother welcomes him into the beauty of the bindi, explaining its significance. This book does a wonderful job of meeting children who are exploring their gender exactly where they are.
In this beautiful children’s picture book by Vivek Shraya, author of the acclaimed God Loves Hair, a five-year-old South Asian boy becomes fascinated with his mother’s bindi, the red dot commonly worn by Hindu women to indicate the point at which creation begins, and wishes to have one of his own. Rather than chastise her son, she agrees to it, and teaches him about its cultural significance, allowing the boy to discover the magic of the bindi, which in turn gives him permission to be more fully himself.
Beautifully illustrated by Rajni Perera, The Boy & the Bindi is a…
I am a mixed-race woman with a big, loving family who has always questioned the way things are and dreamed of a world where we all belong. I’m also the mom of a non-binary, queer adult child and work to support families with LGBTQ+ children. I love reading and talking with kids (and grown-ups too) about race, gender, and the power of being who we are. I also love dancing, butterflies, and hummingbirds.
The author was inspired by her daughter to write this book, with the hope that it would help Black children and other children of color feel seen. Each time I turned a page my heart swelled a bit more as I read about all the ways that Layla finds happiness and strength in family, community, and living things all around. The playful and colorful illustrations paired with the lyrical narrative convey joy and remind us to take notice of the beauty that’s there to be found if we only pay attention. I also loved the reminder of some of my favorite things, like dancing, ladybugs, and climbing trees.
"Affirmations of black childhood abound, and whimsical wishes float like dandelion fluff. Equally as imaginative as the lyrical text, Corrin's boldly colored, textured illustrations beautifully capture the buoyant spirit of Layla, a brown girl exuding confidence, comfortable in her own skin-indoors and out. Well-illustrated poetry of the best kind that will leave sunshine in its wake." -STARRED REVIEW, Kirkus
Seven-year-old Layla loves life! So she keeps a happiness book. What is happiness for her? For you?
Spirited and observant, Layla is a child who's been given room to grow, making happiness both thoughtful and intimate. It's her dad talking about…
I am a mixed-race woman with a big, loving family who has always questioned the way things are and dreamed of a world where we all belong. I’m also the mom of a non-binary, queer adult child and work to support families with LGBTQ+ children. I love reading and talking with kids (and grown-ups too) about race, gender, and the power of being who we are. I also love dancing, butterflies, and hummingbirds.
This is a stunning bilingual story about a boy whose father teaches him about songs as a way of expressing love, and then helps him write a love song for a special boy. I fell in love with the story when I first saw the short-film version and am equally enthusiastic about the picture book. The author describes the story as a “queer reclamation of the Mexican serenata tradition” and shows us a family that transmits the deep meaning of cultural traditions while also re-imagining them. The gorgeous illustrations convey a sense of softness and magic. Along with the narrative, written in both English and Spanish, the images carry the reader into a world that is pure beauty, affirmation, celebration, and joy.
WINNER--2019 International Latino Book Award (Best Children's Picture Book in English)
WINNER--2019 International Latino Book Award (Best First Book-Children & Youth-Bilingual)
2019 American Library Association "Rainbow Book List" SelectionA reclamation of the Mexican serenata tradition, follow the story of a young boy who asks his father if there is a song for a boy who loves a boy. Como reapropiación de la serenata Mexicana, Cuando Amamos Cantamos cuenta la historia de un niño que le pide a su padre que canten una canción para un niño que ama a otro niño. When We Love Someone We Sing to Them reframes…
As the Black American daughter of Jamaican immigrants born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, I love stories that depict the beauty of being multifaceted human beings. Stories steeped in broad understandings of place and home. Stories that encourage us to delight in being the people we are. I also believe our children are natural poets and storytellers. Lyrical picture books filled with rich language and sensory details encourage the thriving of such creativity. In addition to writing All the Places We Call Home, I'm the author ofAll the Colors We Will See, an essay collection about race, immigration, and belonging.
Where Are You From?boasts breathtakingly gorgeous text and expansive illustrations. I love this book because it first draws attention to how our world wants to simplify a person’s story. The book then counters with the beautiful reality that we are complex. As the child of immigrants, I could relate to this little girl seeking answers to the narrow question people keep asking her. She turns to Abuelo, who refuses to answer in ways that might categorize her. Instead, his poetic words sweep her up in a triumphant story rooted in deep ties to generations past and ongoing connections with place. Ultimately, this story transforms that feeling of not belonging into a celebration of who you are. What a joy!
This resonant and award-winning picture book tells the story of one girl who constantly gets asked a simple question that doesn't have a simple answer. A great conversation starter in the home or classroom-a book to share, in the spirit of I Am Enough by Grace Byers and Keturah A. Bobo.
When a girl is asked where she's from-where she's really from-none of her answers seems to be the right one.
Unsure about how to reply, she turns to her loving abuelo for help. He doesn't give her the response she expects. She gets an even better one.
As a teenager, I started reading about people who lived in marginal places, such as the Eskimos of the far north and the Kung San of South Africa. Living a middle-class American life it was difficult for me to understand how people could not only live in those places but also love them. After I raised my children, my husband encouraged me to return to college, and I did, majoring in anthropology. I learned about the deep connections that bind all people—love of home and family. By learning about other people’s lives, much of what confused me about my own fell away.
Never in Anger was a life-changing book for me. It led me to my deep interest in anthropology and, ultimately, to me writing.
Jean Briggs was dropped off in Northern Canada to do her fieldwork for her PhD by studying an Eskimo (now Inuit) family. The bush pilot would be back to pick her up in a year! She wanted to study shamanism, but they refused to talk about what they considered their primitive past, so she studied the children instead.
Some of the book is about language acquisition, I skipped over that part when I reread it. What interests me is how she learned to understand and live in a culture so totally foreign to hers—an amazing journey for her and for me.
In the summer of 1963, anthropologist Jean Briggs journeyed to the Canadian Northwest Territories (now Nunavut) to begin a seventeen-month field study of the Utku, a small group of Inuit First Nations people who live at the mouth of the Back River, northwest of Hudson Bay. Living with a family as their "adopted" daughter-sharing their iglu during the winter and pitching her tent next to theirs in the summer-Briggs observed the emotional patterns of the Utku in the context of their daily life.
In this perceptive and highly enjoyable volume the author presents a behavioral description of the Utku through…
I've been book obsessed since I was nine years old and always seemed to gravitate toward realistic stories about animals—especially dogs—and kids facing tough times. So when I became an author, those were naturally the same type of stories I wanted to write. So far I’ve penned seven middle-grade novels. All the books in this list provided inspiration to my own writing in one way or the other and helped me to become a more compassionate and empathetic storyteller. I hope you find the same joy and inspiration when you read them.
I first discovered this little gem of a book while researching a historical fiction novel of my own. Set in the 1920s, it’s about a little orphan girl named Bo who's being raised by two rough and tumble gold miners—both men. It’s a fun and exciting adventure story, while at the same time providing an insightful and authentic look at life after the famous Alaska gold rush. A perfect read for ages 8-12.
It's the 1920s, and Bo was headed for an Alaska orphanage when she won the hearts of two tough gold miners who set out to raise her, enthusiastically helped by all the kind people of the nearby Eskimo village. Bo learns Eskimo along with English, helps in the cookshack, learns to polka, and rides along with Big Annie and her dog team. There's always some kind of excitement: Bo sees her first airplane, has a run-in with a bear, and meets a mysterious lost little boy. Bo at Ballard Creek by Kirkpatrick Hill is an unforgettable story of a little…
I grew up believing that all men are brothers and that in our hearts we all hold the same values. It’s not true. It presumes that western cultural values are the best mankind can aspire to. In fact, it’s an act of aggression to project my values onto others. I love to explore other cultures by living amongst them or reading a good book about them. As a religious, trained anthropologist, I try to discern their big questions about life, the universe, and everything. Do they have any bearing on my questions? After all, the quest is for better questions, rather than comfortable answers (like ‘42’ - see Hitchhiker’s Guide…).
The word ‘fantasy' comes from the Greek ϕαντασία, meaning ‘making visible.’ There are many peoples who are invisible to western civilization. I was trained as an anthropologist; seeing the mysteries of different cultures holds a special attraction for me. The book Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos is anthropology, not fiction, which makes visible a way of life unimaginable to modern man. The people it describes are real, which makes their stories all the more compelling. In one instance, Rasmussen (who was half-Eskimo) grilled a shaman named Aua about the meaning of all their beliefs and rituals. The shaman turned the questions back on Rasmussen and said, “All our customs come from life and turn towards life; we explain nothing, we believe nothing, but in what I have just shown you lies our answer to all you ask.” Aua didn’t answer all that I ask about life; he helped…
Excerpt from Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos
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It’s Saturday, 5 p.m. If you could peer back in time to the late ’60s, you’d find me plunked in front of our new colour RCA Victor, a Swanson TV dinner steaming before me, and the theme…da-da-DAAA-da-da-da-da-DAAAA, announcing my favourite show: Star Trek. I absorbed the logic of Mr. Spock, the passion of Dr. McCoy, and the fantastical world of Klingons, wormholes, and warp drives. Add to that a degree in history and English, and it set the stage for my passion to read and write in genres of science fiction and magical realism. I hope you find these books as stimulating and thought-provoking as I did.
Perseverance, and an unwitting courage against all odds; that’s the essence of Farley Mowat’s People of the Deer.
Mowat’s book immortalizes a small band of Inuit as they traverse the barrens of Canada’s eastern Arctic, enduring starvation, punishing winter conditions, and a sociopolitical system bent on eradicating their five-thousand-year-old culture. This book shattered my perception about how I see myself as a Canadian, and injustices inflicted on indigenous peoples.
Written over seventy years ago, People of the Deer is testament to Mowat’s insight into a travesty that continues to this today, and tells me we still have a long way to go.
In 1886, the Ihalmiut people of northern Canada numbered seven thousand by 1946, when Farley Mowat began his two-year stay in the Arctic, the population had fallen to just forty. With them, he observed for the first time the phenomenon that would inspire him for the rest of his life: the millennia-old migration of the Arctic's caribou herds. He also endured bleak, interminable winters, suffered agonizing shortages of food, and witnessed the continual, devastating intrusions of outsiders bent on exploitation. Here, in this classic and first book to demonstrate the mammoth literary talent that would produce some of the most…
I grew up in Los Angeles, California, which is frequently imagined as well as experienced. As a child, we lived by the beach and in the foothills of Angeles National Forest. The leaps of faith you make in this landscape were always clear: earthquakes, wildfires, and mudslides occur regularly. The question asked often about the Arctic: “why on earth do people live there?” applies also to California: life in beautiful landscapes and seascapes is risky. Then, I made my first trip to Iceland alone in 1995, and have now been to Iceland ten times, Greenland twice, and Nayan Mar, above the Russian Arctic Circle, each time with fascination.
This book is a history of American polar expeditions and their relationship with the Inuit who helped them survive the Arctic.
It is vividly written and balances both outsider and insider views of the Arctic, showing how different they can be, in an incredibly authentic way. It’s a sad book that stays with you for a long time.
Many Americans imagine the Arctic as harsh, freezing, and nearly uninhabitable. The living Arctic, however-the one experienced by native Inuit and others who work and travel there-is a diverse region shaped by much more than stereotype and mythology. Do You See Ice? presents a history of Arctic encounters from 1850 to 1920 based on Inuit and American accounts, revealing how people made sense of new or changing environments.
Routledge vividly depicts the experiences of American whalers and explorers in Inuit homelands. Conversely, she relates stories of Inuit who traveled to the northeastern United States and were similarly challenged by the…
I live in England but grew up in Canada, where my Grade 5 Social Studies teacher filled my head with stories of people and places, including the Vikings. In the early 1960s, I learned about the excavations at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland featured in Canadian newspapers. My first job was in Denmark, and I subsequently travelled in the Nordic homelands and settlement areas, including the Faeroes, Iceland, and Greenland, visiting museums and archaeological sites at every opportunity. Norse America is my 26th book, but it is both the one with the deepest roots in my own past and the one most engaged with contemporary concerns about race.
This book by a distinguished Canadian archaeologist is the finest overview of the human history of the circumpolar region. Its twin concerns are the indigenous peoples of the Arctic and the impact of intruders from the south. It is unusual in its coverage of the Russian and Scandinavian Arctic. The excellent account of the Norse colonies in Greenland feeds into a compelling analysis (through the prism of trade goods) of Norse penetration into the territories of the Dorset and Thule peoples.
The Arctic of towering icebergs and midnight sun, of flaming auroras and endless winter nights, has long provoked flights of the imagination. Now, in "The Last Imaginary Place", renowned archaeologist, Robert McGhee lifts the veil to reveal the true Arctic world. Based on thirty years of work with native peoples of the Arctic and travel in the region, McGhee's account dispels notions of the frozen land as an exotic, remote world that exists apart from civilization. Between the frigid reality and lurid fantasy lies McGhee's true interest, the people who throughout human history have called the Arctic home. He paints…
