📦 Buy on Amazon or at 📚 Bookshop.org

Listen, Wonder, Ask

2025 Kansas National Education Association Reading Circle Recommended Title

2025 International Latino Book Awards, Best Use of Photos or Illustrations Inside a Book — Bronze Medal

When Nadine asks a new friend if she has a coming-here story too, she topples the first domino in a community-wide chain of neighbors and new friends listening to those around them, wondering about their perspectives, and finally asking thoughtful, curious questions. This lyrical, pay-it-forward story encourages readers to engage with those around them, seeing each similarity and difference as part of the colorful landscape of community.
Elly Berke has always loved children's literature and the power of asking good questions. Her earliest influence was Barbara Cooney, whom she met in 1991 at a book signing in Damariscotta, Maine. The characters in this story are inspired by people she has met on her professional journey through public education: leading programs at New York City's Tenement Museum, teaching ESL in bilingual schools, and studying Arts in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Outside of writing and teaching, she is a professional actor involved in many projects around her local Somerville, Massechusetts, and virtually through her home voice-over studio.

Luciana Navarro Powell's coming-here story started in 2002, when she moved to the United States. She loves asking people what their own coming- here stories are whenever she's asked where she's from. Powell has created art since childhood and became a full-time illustrator in 2001. She moved from watercolor and acrylic paints to the digital brush, loving the freedom and the possibilities of experimentation with textures, and then to mixed media, incorporating photographs and scanned objects with traditional techniques in a digital melting pot. The colors, vibrancy, and warmth of her native Brazil infuse her work with a sunny optimism, humor, and warm human-animal-landscape interactions. As an immigrant, she likes to make sure that kids can see themselves in her art.
"Berke’s sweet tale of the domino effect that starts with one curious and accepting girl’s question is sorely needed in this time of division and discord, as is the characters’ use of the term “coming-here story” to inquire about others’ heritages, rather than the potentially more intrusive “Where are you from?” Powell’s soft and welcoming, watercolor-like illustrations capture present and past at once as each immigrant’s history is revealed." ― Kirkus Reviews

"A meaningful story teaching about diversity and the colorful landscapes of our neighbors and towns." ― Story Monsters Ink