Beautiful

PreS-Gr 1-This picture book is filled with wit and musings on what it means for a young girl to be beautiful. The illustrations evoke a feeling of uniqueness, independence, and strength, defining beauty through diversity, talents, and passions. Girls are playing football, eating messy oranges, digging in the mud, laughing at themselves, and flying like birds on swings. Drawings, vignettes, and square panels provide balance to the text. Simple sentences and phrases stir the imagination. Bold line drawings and rich colors bring a sense of wonder and personality to each girl. The wordplay is clever: "Beautiful girls know all about makeup," as the girls dress up as pirates with fake beards and mustaches. Each wears a pirate hat, carries a sword, and navigates her own boat on the high seas. "Beautiful girls…have a smart style" refers not to fashion sense but to a sense of discovery and exploration, as each page shows a young woman investigating bugs and plants and other girls building a robotic car or creating a science experiment.