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Although I do not often tend to grant five star rankings anymore (having become and perhaps indeed also a bit sadly considerably more and more critical lately and less patient with regard to a given book not one hundred percent satisfying and pleasing my personal reading pleasure as well as my academic and for picture books my aesthetic standards) I am going to make a happy and shinning exception with regard to Yuyi Morales' 2018 immigration-themed Dreamers. For while Morales' accompanying illustrations are not really totally to my aesthetic tastes (that while I absolutely enjoy if not even love her sense and use of colour and how she depicts buildings, flowers, animals and the like, I have always found and not just with her latest picture book at that, not just with Dreamers, that her human figures are sometimes a trifle too unrealistic and garishly hued for me), her presented (and autobiographical) narrative, the personal immigration story she relates in her Dreamers in oh so so very many ways is totally and utterly relatable to and for me as a fellow (and book loving) immigrant that I was basically and yes almost constantly nodding my head with and in understanding and commiseration whilst perusing and loving Dreamers.

Because just like Yuyi Moralles relates how she in 1994 when she immigrated with her infant son from Mexico to the United States of America, the public library and discovering books became her vehicle for learning English and for slowly being able to feel at home and settled in her new country of residence (and her son as well, as Dreamers obviously is about both of them, although truthfully, I did and do focus mostly on Yuyi and not so much on her son Kelly), when I immigrated to Canada from Germany with my family in 1976 (at the age of ten and speaking NO English whatsoever at that time), it was the discovery of the school library (absolutely full full full of books and something that my small village school in Germany most certainly did NOT have in 1976) which not only enchanted me but also absolutely and truly jumpstarted my rather fast mastery of the English language. For I have always loved reading, and when I realised that I could sign out books of my choice from the school library, like Yuyi, these books became my life and basically also in ALL ways my ESL instructor (even though unlike Yuyi, I actually had to at the beginning fight a bit for the right to sign out books appropriate for my age group, as at first, the school librarian only and annoyingly for and to me wanted to let me sign out the easiest board books, because she thought that it would be too frustrating for me to read children's novels with my at that time limited English, until I managed to somehow and luckily for me convince her that as a ten year old, having to sign out board books obviously meant for toddlers was a bit embarrassing and if I had trouble with comprehension and unfamiliar vocabulary words, there was always the dictionary).

Highly recommended as a wonderfully authentic (and colourfully exuberant) immigration story is Yuyi Morales' Dreamers, and in particular since it so totally and joyfully celebrates the power of books and reading and how the latter (through libraries etc.) is and should be celebrated as a lovely, versatile and indeed very much and often also a successful tool for new, for recent immigrants to quickly and pleasurably learn the language or languages of their new countries of residence (provided of course that the immigrants in question are in fact literate, that they actually do know how to read and are speaking a language that is not just oral, that also exists in written form, for if that is not the case, then naturally, said immigrants will first have to be taught their letters, will have to be instructed on how to read in and of itself before they can truly appreciate and use the power of books).