Picture Books – Blue Sky White Stars by Sarvinder Naberhaus and Kardir Nelson

Blue Sky White Stars
Sarvinder Naberhaus and Kardir Nelson

IR jF NAB in the Genealogy & Local History Library

With powerful, sparse text and stunning artwork, this book will make you feel proud to be an American but inspired to work to make it a better place for EVERYONE. It’s a reminder of the natural and cultural beauty of our country, and that the flag is a symbol that belongs to all of us. With paintings of the Statue of Liberty, civil rights marchers, a spacecraft at Cape Canaveral blasting off, the flag on the moon, and other portraits of American life, it is a reminder of all we can accomplish and what we can be when we are at our best.  The publisher, Penguin Random House, calls it “an ode to America then and now, from sea to shining sea.” 

There is also a bilingual edition of Blue Sky White Stars available with text in Spanish and English. The bilingual edition was chosen for Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.

Sarvinder Naberhaus is an award-winning author who immigrated to the United States from Punjab, India, and currently lives in Iowa. She was selected by the Iowa Center for the Book to represent Iowa on the Great Reads About Great Places map at the 2019 National Book Festival in Washington, D.C.

You may recognize Kadir Nelson’s artwork from covers of The New Yorker magazine, most recently “Say Their Names” in June and this week’s “Distant Summer.” The covers are stunning in print, and interactive online (where Nelson describes the decions he made for the artwork). His paintings are also in the private and public permanent collections of the Muskegon Museum of Art, The National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, the International Olympic Committee, the U.S. House of Representatives, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture.