Breanna J. McDaniel is the co-founder of REIYL (Researchers Exploring Inclusive Youth Literature) and an emerging scholar and author. She’s published in myriad academic journals, an academic anthology and her debut picture book Hands Up! was published with Dial Books in 2019.
She has five forthcoming picture books, one with Dial GO FORTH AND TELL: The Life of August Baker, Librarian and Master Storyteller, one with Denene Millner Books, Impossible Moon, and three more with Henry Holt Books for Young Readers.
Breanna’s academic research is focused on surveillance and respectability politics in representations of Black children as food in contemporary picture books. A proud alumna of Emory University and Simmons University, she is currently a PhD researcher at a university in England.
This triumphant picture book recasts a charged phrase as part of a black girl’s everyday life–hands up for a hug, hands up in class, hands up for a high five–before culminating in a moment of resistance at a protest march.
A young black girl lifts her baby hands up to greet the sun, reaches her hands up for a book on a high shelf, and raises her hands up in praise at a church service. She stretches her hands up high like a plane’s wings and whizzes down a hill so fast on her bike with her hands way up. As she grows, she lives through everyday moments of joy, love, and sadness. And when she gets a little older, she joins together with her family and her community in a protest march, where they lift their hands up together in resistance and strength.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.