Kamau and ZuZu Find a Way

An Academy of American Poets Featured Fall Book for Young Readers!
One of PW’s “12 Children’s Books by Black Authors to Read in 2024!”
A Bookstagang Best of 2024 Picture Book Selection, for Best Illustration​!
One of Betsy Bird's Caldenotts of 2024!
A Parade Magazine Best New Book Release of the Month!
A Children’s Book Council Hot Off the Press Selection, August 2024!

"National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and poet Girmay crafts a cosmic metaphor for the Black diaspora in this picture book illustrated by New Yorker contributor Ejaita. After Kamau and his grandmother ZuZu suddenly wake up on the moon, they must draw on the culture ZuZu lovingly remembers in order to thrive and establish connections with far-flung, much-missed relatives."

* Publishers Weekly, 12 Children’s Books by Black Authors to Read in 2024 *
★ STARRED REVIEW! "Examining the challenges of being forced to leave one’s home, this visually gorgeous, nuanced work echoes stories from the African diaspora as well as global areas of conflict. Girmay’s folkloric text is simple and straightforward yet deeply moving... Ejaita’s textured illustrations use saturated color to brilliant effect as bright colors pop off the page against a background of deep, dark blues and blacks. A stunning and empathetic look at the struggles of displacement." * Kirkus *

STARRED REVIEW! ★ “Girmay’s contemporary folktale uses succinct, direct language to convey the anguish of relocation and celebrate the resilience necessary to survive in a new land. Ejaita’s striking illustrations make use of flat, often textured shapes and human figures that are literally black, with fine white lines defining features... Particularly interesting is her depiction of the moon, which begins as a bleak gray landscape and gradually morphs into a colorful terrain. Reflecting on her life, ZuZu says, ‘This is not what I would have chosen... But we will have to find a way to live, as people do.’ Compelling and heartfelt.”

* Booklist *
"Here is an allegory that touches with great tenderness the global consequence of one of humanity’s most inhumane choices. But although the book celebrates the African diaspora—an undeniably singular experience—it has universal resonance for the broader experience of finding oneself transplanted, by choice or by circumstance... At the heart of the story is a reckoning with the meaning of resilience, of strength, of that bright stubbornness by which we make our lives emblems of the possible amid the improbable... Captures the essence of the human spirit: 'But we will have to find a way to live, as people do.' ... Kamau ZuZu Find a Way is lifeblood for the soul from cover to cover." -- Maria Popova * The Marginalian *

“If you are going to talk about people displaced from their homes and loved ones, with no recourse of return, how do you do that in a folktale setting? In the case of this book, baby Kamau and his grandmother Mama ZuZu wake up one day to find themselves on the moon… Now, about this point, reading the book you are assuming that it’s going to end with the happy resolution of everyone reuniting back on Earth at some point. Nope. I like a picture book where the emotions are not entirely resolved and the solution is not entirely there. And the writing? So incredible… Add in the truly beautiful art of Diana Ejaita… this book is a jaw-dropper.”

-- Betsy Bird * A Fuse 8 Production (a School Library Journal blog) *

“[A] diasporic look at honoring legacy while finding ‘a way to live, as people do.’”

* Publishers Week