BIG FAMILY BEACH DAY

What could be better than a family day at the beach?

Narrator Maya, a child of color with light-brown skin and Afro puff pigtails, explains it all to readers: “When you go to the beach with your cousins, aunts, uncles, grandma, and mom and you’re doing something really fun, everyone gets involved.” Maya’s sentences are like the day itself: full of family and excitement, breathlessly racing from sand to surf and back. Crews’ story and art take place entirely in double-page spreads that mostly teem with Maya’s relations, a boisterous, multi-racial and -generational crew. The author/illustrator uses the gutter to balance her compositions, distributing family members across the tableaux. The few scenes that focus specifically on Maya and darker-skinned cousin Leo, who together get to make “all the decisions” this year, are all the more effective for Crews’ variations in perspective. In a rare close-up, they joyously stir up a “TIDAL WAVE!”; in another, they appear in quadruplicate, dancing in and out of the waves in a striking, mirrored overhead view. Even when Maya and Leo’s play results in a scolding, the love that binds this family together is as warm as the summer sun. This outing appears to be a once-a-year celebration, which distills and concentrates its importance: With a ritual as special as this one, of course lunch “will be the best sandwich, ever.”

Pure joy.