Matt Burgess. Doubleday, $25.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-385-53680-6
The uncle of the title of this gripping, well-written book set on the mean streets of contemporary Queens is an undercover narcotics officer in the NYPD. “Uncle” Janice Itwaru, a New Yorker of Guyanese descent, poses as a drug addict to make “buys”...
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Matthew Burgess, illus. by Catia Chien. Chronicle, $18.99 (52p) ISBN 978-1-4521-7191-3
Burgess (Drawing on Walls: A Life of Keith Haring) and Chien (The Town of Turtle) add savor to a simple story with visceral writing and elemental artwork. A red balloon floats toward a young black bear: “It was red as a berry and round like the moon
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Matthew Burgess, illus. by Kris Di Giacomo. Enchanted Lion (Consortium, dist.), $17.95 (64p) ISBN 978-1-59270-171-1
Burgess’s first picture book introduces readers to E.E. Cummings, exploring his development as a poet from the verse he dictated to his mother as a child through to his adulthood. Befitting the subject, Burgess experiments with language, punctuation,
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Matthew Burgess, illus. by Evan Turk. Chronicle, $17.99 (64p) ISBN 978-1-4521-7973-5
On her eighth birthday, red-spectacled Maude, portrayed with brown skin, buries a precious red tin box beneath a young dogwood tree, and then makes a promise to herself. Over successive spreads, Turk (Hello, Moon) fast-forwards, painting portraits...
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Matthew Burgess, illus. by Fiona Woodcock. Knopf, $17.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-399-55662-3
In this picture book by Burgess (Enormous Smallness: A Story of E.E. Cummings), what looks at first like a shock-headed monster proves to be an angry sibling. The glowering creature has a head full of flaming red fur that matches his furry feet, and
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Matthew Burgess, illus. by Shahrzad Maydani. Knopf, $17.99 (32p) ISBN 978-1-984893-77-2
In this gentle narrative by Burgess, Nico, a smiling, dot-eyed Black child, does not quite fit in with his new classmates. Nico prefers “watching the insects/ crossing a crack in the blacktop/ like climbers over a mountain pass” to engaging in...
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Matthew Burgess, illus. by Josh Cochran. Enchanted Lion, $18.95 (64p) ISBN 978-1-59270-267-1
In this picture book biography about artist and muralist Haring, Burgess and Cochran relate their subject’s path to focusing his inexorable drive. Via straightforward language, Burgess describes Haring discovering Robert Henri’s The Art Spirit in...
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Matthew Burgess, illus. by Josh Cochran. Enchanted Lion, $19.95 (48p) ISBN 978-1-59270-380-7
Loss fuels a creative contemplation of love in this imaginative story of memoriam from the creators of Drawing on Walls. Young narrator Sylvester, portrayed with pale skin and dark hair, sits at a table, drawing means of sending the letter they’ve...
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Matthew Burgess, illus. by Kara Kramer. Enchanted Lion, $18.95 (80p) ISBN 978-1-59270-316-6
Burgess’s captivating picture book biography of Sister Corita Kent (1918–1986) tells the story of a person and an artist always in a state of becoming: “Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail. There’s only make.” From her working-class...
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Matthew Burgess, illus. by Doug Salati. Tundra, $19.99 (128p) ISBN 978-1-77488-028-9
Burgess offers fantastical fragments and affirming messages throughout this rich trove of impish verse. In digitally colored pencil drawings, some stylistically reminiscent of Maurice Sendak’s in A Hole Is to Dig, Caldecott Medalist Salati offers...
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Matthew Burgess, illus. by Marc Majewski. Knopf, $19.99 (48p) ISBN 978-1-9848-9380-2
In a world bound by rules and conventions, what’s it like to be someone “content to do his own thing, in his own way, in his own time”? Burgess (Sylvester’s Letter) and Majewski (The Art of Rewilding) provide an answer in this splendid biography of...
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Matthew Burgess, illus. by Cátia Chien. Clarion, $19.99 (44p) ISBN 978-0-06-321672-3
Writing in limpid prose and illustrating in sunny, softly stroked multimedia spreads, previous collaborators Burgess and Chien (The Bear and the Moon) follow two East Asian–cued children through a hot city Fourth of July. “In the summer, the sun...
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Matthew Burgess, illus. by Sirin Thada. Enchanted Lion, $19.95 (68p) ISBN 978-1-59270-422-4
Named after his father’s jazz band and called Skipper by his mother, Prince Rogers Nelson (1958–2016) was teased for his small stature before becoming a larger-than-life icon. Burgess employs brief anecdotes to detail Prince’s personality and arc...
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