You want a perfect opening line for a children’s book, clear and direct yet full of portent? “It was very early in the morning when Kathleen stepped into the kitchen.” It sits by itself on a two-page spread simply, charmingly rendered by Ramona Kaulitzki, a German illustrator.
The girl, in “Cookie Queen” (Random House, $18.99), is Kathleen King of Tate’s Bake Shop in Southampton, the words are her own, in this true tale of taste and business acumen manifested early, and the message is one of persistence.
“They were good,” Ms. King writes as we see her 11-year-old self sampling her first batch, “but too puffy and too gooey. Kathleen liked her cookies thin and crispy.” Famous last, or first, words.
Again and again she tries adjusting the ingredients — salt, sugar, baking soda, eggs, flour, chocolate chips, and finally, tellingly, salted butter.
“Cookie Queen” nicely features Kathleen’s relationship with her supportive father, Tate, and the King family’s North Sea Farms, the bucolic highlight of any trip along Noyac Road, if you can pry your eyes for a moment from the tailgater in your rearview.
And that recipe Kathleen sweated over in her youth is no Coca-Cola original formula kept under lock and key — it’s a back-of-the-book addition for all to try.
“I Am We”
A purple-clad kid with a blue cat friend opens “I Am We” (Abrams, $15.99), the new one from Susan Verde of East Hampton, with a self-aware statement. “I know it is important to take care of me. To focus on my own breath, my own needs. To be kind to my mind.”
The question that follows is at once potentially devastating and the crux of the matter: “Is that selfish? How does caring for myself help anyone else?”
The lesson here for kids is that if they feel better about themselves inwardly, they’ll more readily turn goodness outward. As a result, “the more I can be there for others,” as the protagonist puts it, and “that is how we make progress and change.”
This is an aspirational book. It is also, if you’re not careful, something of a sad one. That is, if you contrast statements like “When there is shyness and a feeling of not belonging, we can be the welcoming committee: interested and thoughtful, making sure there is a place for everyone” with the current political climate in which the powerful and well off weirdly punch down on the most vulnerable, whether trans kids or migrants following jobs to a country all too willing to exploit their labor.
“Connected is what we are: part of a worldwide community, diverse and magnificent, kind and accepting, supportive and present. All of us important, none of us alone.”
There are people struggling up the Darien Gap who could stand to hear that message.
“Waiting in the Wings”
Sag Harbor’s Emma Walton Hamilton has tapped a touching slice of village animal life for her latest picture book with her mother, Julie Andrews — the ducks known to meander across and around Bay Street, or in this case over to the theater, where two mallards make a temporary home in a planter to lay and hatch eggs.
Mr. and Mrs. Puddleduck are the stars in “Waiting in the Wings” (Little, Brown, $18.99), a heartening yarn in which Mr. Puddleduck becomes enthralled with the stage, particularly a feather-bedecked chorus line, while outside on the sidewalk the hatchlings are suddenly scrambling to stretch their legs, all dynamically, digitally illustrated by E.G. Keller in what look like watercolors.
It’s performers and musicians to the rescue, however, as they exit the theater to stop traffic and form a new kind of chorus line — of ducklings headed out and off the wharf and into the water.
All together now . . .