Tag: Yas Imamura

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The Elevator on 74th Street is cheery

Posted on by Rosemary Kiladitis

The Elevator on 74th Street, by Laura Gehl/Illustrated by Yas Imamura, (Sept. 2025, Beach Lane Books), $19.99, ISBN: 9781665905077

Ages 4-8

Do you ever think your building’s elevator has it out for you? Well, Ellie the Elevator is not one of those elevators. She loves her job, even when the people she works for don’t notice her, and she has a favorite person: Thea, the little girl who was born just as Ellie was installed in her building. She’s watched Ellie grow up and make a best friend, and feels terrible when Thea’s best friend moves away. Nothing she does manages to cheer Thea: not lighting up floors in a “T” shape, playing her favorite song over and over, even keeping her safe from a neighbor who wears a lot of perfume. When a new girl moves into the building, though, Ellie’s mission is set: get these two girls to be friends! Gehl’s storytelling is always playful and fun to read and Imamura’s mixed media illustration present a bevy of individuals in the building, all with personalities you can guess at with a glance. Ellie the Elevator has lights that look like eyes, complete with happy pink lights reflecting and standing in for cheeks. Her floor numbers curve, giving her a smile, when her mission is complete. All in all, a feel-good, playful story that kids will enjoy. A recommended first purchase, especially in areas where readers live in buildings.

 

Posted in picture books

“The miracle is in all of us”: Love in the Library

Posted on by Rosemary Kiladitis

Love in the Library, by Maggie Tokuda-Hall/Illustrated by Yas Imamura, (Feb. 2022, Candlewick Press), $18.99, ISBN: 9781536204308

Ages 6-9

Inspired by award-winning author Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s maternal grandparents, Love in the Library is a wrenching and inspirational story of finding love and hope in the darkest times. Tama is a librarian in the Minidoka internment camp during World War II, where she meets George, a patron who shows up every day to check out books and talk to Tama. Life in the camp is brutal, and Tama’s resilience is flagging, but George is always there to smile and support her. Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s language is powerful as she describes life in the camp and Tama’s depression: “The barbed wire fences and guard towers cast long shadows over her path”; “And though each camp was different, they were all the same. Uncomfortable and unjust”; “Tama kept her eyes down and tried not to think about the life she used to have”. Yas Imamura’s gouache and watercolor palette uses dull browns greens, setting the mood for life in Minodoka, but dresses Tama and George in bright colors; Imamura also gives the cramped conditions in the housing bright colors – a pretty pink quilt acts as a wall between rooms – to convey hope and the determination to carry on. When Tama loses herself in her books, she dreams of surreal knights and ships, young lovers and butterflies. An author’s note provides background to Tama’s and George’s story. Endpapers show a wall of barbed wire stretching endlessly across the covers. Love in the Library is a story of finding hope when there feels like there is none left, and joins the growing body of work that breaks the long-held silence about that period of American history.

Love in the Library has starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, BookPage, Booklist, and the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books. Download a teacher’s guide and the author’s note at Candlewick’s book detail page.