If your kids need something new, here are a few picture books and a beginner’s chapter book as well as an undersea tale and a coloring book based on Native American teaching stories.

“A Different Pond” by Bao Phi, illustrated by Thi Bui (Capstone, $15.95): Sometimes a fishing trip is about more than fishing. In this lovely picture book, which earned six starred reviews in national literary journals, Saigon-born Bao Phi reached back to his childhood to write about a boy whose father wakes him early in the morning so they can go fishing. But it’s really about being the loved child of immigrants who face challenges:

“If you got another job, why do we still have to fish for food?” I ask. “Everything in American costs a lot of money,” he explains. I feel callouses on his hand when he squeezes mine.

Later, although his mother looks tired, she smiles at the fish “in the big white bucket” and asks the boy to help her fix them before she goes to work.

Thi Bui, also born in Vietnam, uses graphic novel techniques for muscular illustrations in deep colors. In one endearing picture the boy is smiling, showing he’s missing a bottom tooth.

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September 14, 2020 Pandemic prose: COVID-19 sparks literary efforts In an author’s note, Bao Phi writes about living in the Phillips neighborhood of South Minneapolis: “Both my parents worked multiple jobs to survive and support us in a country whose people did not understand why we were here at best, and blamed us for the aftermath of the war at worst. … Now that I am a father myself, I wanted to honor the struggled of my parents.”

Bao says this book began as a poem. With encouragement from local writers of children’s books, whom he describes as “very white but very supportive,” he turned it into a book that is considered a contender for the prestigious Caldecott Award.

It’s no surprise “A Different Pond” was born in poetry. Coffee House Press has published two of Bao’s collections: “Song I Sing” and “Thousand Star Hotel.” He is a national spoken word slam champion and program director at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis.

During Bao’s reading from “A Different Pond” at SubText Books in downtown St. Paul, he talked about a lack of books about refugees. “It’s very difficult for an Asian-American writer like me, writing about issues of racism and poverty,” he said. “A lot of books don’t address topics Asian-American writers take on.”

He talked about his whip-smart 8-year-old daughter, Song, who’s something of a local internet celebrity because her dad shares her funny and insightful comments on Facebook.

“Song is not seeing representations of herself as an Asian-American person (in books),” Bao said. “She has exhibited shame of her race. She’s asking if I could come to her school so her classmates could hear my story. She wants them to know about her people.”

Bao, who was 34 when his daughter was born, admitted that “before she was born was afraid of the world, afraid of myself, afraid of bringing a kid into this world. I was not prepared to be so joyful about how this little embryo turns into an amazing little being.”

“Eugenia Lincoln and the Unexpected Package” by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Chris Van Dusen (Candlewick Press, $14.99): Everybody’s favorite author continues her funny Mercy Watson books about a pig who lives on Deckawoo Drive in this story of Eugenia Lincoln, who “spent a large portion of her life being frustrated. It was hard not to be frustrated. The world was just so … frustrating. It refused to bend. It refused to be reasonable, sensible.”

Eugenia, portrayed by Van Dusen as a long, lean lady with a big jaw, narrow face and downturned mouth, is not happy when an anonymous person sends her, of all things, an accordion. And who is this round-faced guy named Gaston who suddenly appears?

What happens when a crabby person like Eugenia is given an unwanted gift? Maybe she’ll find life can be joyful.

There are several delightful full-page drawings throughout the book, and Mercy the toast-loving pig, makes an appearance, annoying Eugenia by sitting on the sofa.

“Winds & Currents: Native American Stories” retold and illustrated by Joan Henrik (Holy Cow! Press, $15.95): The stories in this coloring book, demonstrating what we can learn from the natural world, originated in tribal cultures throughout North America. It is based on 14 animal icons graphic designer Henrik created for a terrazzo floor design now inlaid in the new Amsoil sports arena in the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center. Her “Winds & Currents” was selected by the Duluth Public Arts Commission in open competition and the design was selected as one of the best terrazzo floors in the U.S. by the National Terrazzo and Mosaic Association.

The coloring book based on the floor design is made up of the tales on right-hand pages with the image to be colored on the facing page. Pictures on the back of the jacket show the installation of the sports arena terrazzo floor, beginning with drawing the design on the concrete to completion.

“TRIO: The Tale of a Three-legged Cat” written and illustrated by Andrea Wisnewski (Godine, $17.95): Wisnewski met Trio, the three-legged cat, when she was helping her brother Anders and his husband, Conrad, move from Minneapolis to the family farm in Connecticut. The gray kitten’s left rear leg was missing below the knee, but Trio is happy on the farm, doing everything other cats do. In this story, the little guy keeps curling up in his favorite hen’s nest because it’s a warm place to sleep. To his and the chickens’ surprise, a chick with a similar physical challenge is hatched. Wisnewski’s illustrations are spare and funny. Her other books include “A Cottage Garden Alphabet” and “Little Red Riding Hood.”

“The Mermaid” by Jan Brett ( Putnam’s, $18.99): Many of Jan Brett’s best-selling picture books evoke winter and the north, including her popular “The Hat.” But when she glimpsed a baby octopus waving its arms in the ocean off the island of Okinawa, she realized intelligent and mischievous octopuses could take the place of the three bears in her under-the-sea Goldilocks story. When she worried that the octopuses looked alien, her friend suggested they wear hats, and the setting and clothes became Japanese in her imagination.

For accuracy, Brett visited Sy, the New England Aquarium’s giant Pacific octopus named for Sy Montgomery (author of the National Book Award finalist “The Soul of an Octopus”). After an “arms on” experience, Brett says, her characters seemed to take shape by themselves. As always, her illustrations are done in lush colors, mostly pinks and yellows, and her famous borders are shells and little sea creatures, some in hiding, that children will have a good time looking for on the page.