The Mistakes That Made Us

Starred review from August 12, 2024
Latham and Waters (Dictionary for a Better World) collaborate anew with this selection of 20 edifying poems that invite readers, per an introduction, to “experience through poetry the real-life mistakes from some people who are brave and open and growing—just like you.” Poems from Jorge Argueta, Linda Sue Park, Naomi Shihab Nye, Jane Yolen, and the editors, among others, are categorized into four sections (“Oopsie-Daisy!,” “Stuff Happens,” “Blessings in Disguise,” and “What Have I Done”), each work accompanied by a prose paragraph detailing the lesson learned. Some are laugh-aloud, as when Darren Sardelli’s speaker describes gluing their uncle to a toilet seat. Kim Rogers’s uniquely
powerful work, meanwhile, involves a speaker’s schoolyard experience with Oklahoma’s Land Run Day: “Here I was a Native girl/ celebrating the day her Wichita ancestors’ land/ was stolen.” Dynamic mixed-media artwork from López (Sylvie and the Wolf) offers energetic visual support for each poem in an anthology packed with a broad spectrum of human emotion and experience. Characters are portrayed with various skin tones. Ages 7–11. Authors’ agent: Rosemary Stimola, Stimola Literary Studio. Illustrator’s agent: Mela Bolinao, MB Artists.