By Yamile Saied Méndez
A girl who's tired of being asked where she's really from takes the question to her Abuelo, and he answers with the whole sweep of who she is and where she belongs.
A girl keeps getting asked where she's from, and the people asking aren't curious about her street or her town. They keep at it, wanting to know why she doesn't look like she's from here. She's tired of it, so she goes to her Abuelo, her grandfather, and asks him for a real answer. He gives her one. She's from the pampas, the wide grasslands. From mountains and oceans and gauchos on horseback. From ancestors and long days of work and a lot of love. When she presses him, but where am I really from, he pulls her close and says she's from him, from here, from now. Each time he answers, the pictures open up big and sweeping.
It puts words to something a lot of children of immigrant families feel before they can name it: the way one question, asked a certain way, can be made to mean you don't quite belong here. The book doesn't argue back at the question. Abuelo just answers it far bigger than anyone expected, turning it into a story about roots and love. I'd reach for this for a child who's been asked it themselves and felt the sting; it reads like a warm hand on the shoulder. And for a child who's done the asking, it's a gentle way to feel how the question can land on the other side. The language is lyrical, so it also reads beautifully aloud.