Abolition Is Love

“Papa says abolition is love—it’s a way of dreaming about the future and making sure that we all get to be free.” As a brown-skinned family prepares signs for Prisoners’ Justice Day, Ware and Fricker outline abolition’s many meanings through the perspective of a child learning about the topic. In bright-hued, bustling illustrations, community members of various abilities, ages, body types, and skin tones create public art, protest police intervention, support unhoused neighbors, stand for the return of Indigenous lands, and welcome formerly imprisoned individuals with open arms. The narrator, too, serves the community, helping to make an accessible park, finding new ways to resolve conflict with a cousin, learning to pass knowledge on to others, visiting an incarcerated relative, and joining others in observing Prisoners’ Justice Day. It’s a powerful picture book that traces philosophies of community care and restorative justice, and exemplifies for readers ways to “help each other to get free along the way to abolition.” Ages 3–7. (Sept.)