Malaika's mother has moved to Canada, where she hopes to find a better way to support the family she left behind in Jamaica. Malaika misses her mother terribly, but she is also worried about her lack of a costume for the upcoming carnival. She dreams of being a rainbow peacock, but first she must find a way to make her costume. With the help of fabric scraps donated by Mrs. Chin, the tailor, and Grandma's sewing talents, Malaika's dream might just come true. Like a rainbow peacock itself, the illustrations in this book burst with a frenzy of colors and textures. Mixed-media collages and pencil drawings are offset by swathes of white space that highlight the bold colors and rhythmic forms. The story comes to a touching close with an image of a tearful Mummy in Canada, holding a photograph of Malaika at the carnival, reminding readers that home can sometimes be a letter away.

Preparing for her first Carnival celebration since Mummy moved from their Caribbean town to Canada to find work, Malaika rejects the idea of reusing Granny's old costume and comes up with her own idea. The bright mixed-media illustrations are filled with stylized images of Caribbean life. With text in the little girl's colloquial voice, readers will quickly feel part of her circle. Glos.

PreS-Gr 2 Lacking money for a new costume, a girl and her grandmother must use their ingenuity to repurpose and repair an old outfit and make it extra special for the Kiddie Carnival Parade. The first-person text is printed against a background of lined paper, and the wordless last page shows Malaika's motheraway working in Canadathoroughly enjoying the letter and pictures she has received. Malaika and those in her Caribbean community speak a lightly lilting patois, and terms like kaiso and cassava are defined in a small glossary on the copyright page. Bright, stylized mixed-media illustrations burst with colors, patterns, and layers and hew closely to the lively text. Occasional highly pixelated areas slightly distract from otherwise vibrant scenes of Carnival costumes and multicultural rural life. VERDICT A fun choice for libraries seeking books about creativity in general or the Caribbean in particular.— Sarah Stone, San Francisco Public Library