Marley and the Family Band

February 28, 2022
Young Marley and her musical family have recently moved from Jamaica to Delaware, where they had plans to introduce themselves to the community with an outdoor concert—until rain calls off the gig. Marley applies her knowledge of hurricanes to the problem at hand: she and her siblings exchange bailing a leaky basement and other neighborly assistance for “a tarp, eight umbrellas, and three rain hats” to cover the stage. But when they discover another neighbor in dire need of rain gear, they gladly give it up—a good deed that, in authors Marley and Baptiste’s play-by-play text, inspires the neighborhood (whose brown-skinned characters have varying skin tones) to ensure that the show goes on. And Rose’s buoyant digital illustrations, in which kids in bright slickers walk amid silvery raindrops, convey a sense of unsinkable community. Ages 4–8.