It’s easy for others to ignore the soft-spoken Marabella. But she has a gift: She notices things that others don’t. She even finds beauty in the tiny flowers that are almost choked out by weeds. To bring attention to their plight, she uses chalk to draw a larger-than-life flower on the outdoor wall before school starts. Her classmates call her out for breaking the rules, but her teacher, Miss Tin, recognizes her hidden talent and provides additional colors so she can draw more objects and moments she considers noteworthy. Inspired by her creativity, others join Marabella, and together, they turn a dull, ordinary wall into something beautiful. Even when rain washes away the lovely garden the youngsters have created over the course of a week, Marabella remains hopeful, pointing out other special images in the rain’s aftermath. Her keen sense of observation is rivaled only by her optimistic heart. Delicate, softly colored illustrations perfect for a child’s eyes enhance this charming story with an important message. Marabella has light tan skin and a perky ribbon in her hair; her class is diverse in terms of race and physical ability.

Kwan lives on a quiet mountainside in 1941. Whether his family eats depends on what his father, a woodcarver, and his mother, a painter, can sell at the farmers market. After Kwan overhears his parents worrying over the lack of food in their onggi pot, he ignores their warnings to stay away from Suka’s Farm and approaches the old Japanese man for a job, introducing himself as Aoki—his legally assigned Japanese name. Cantankerous Mr. Suka initially turns Kwan down but finally lets him help care for the goats. Bit by bit, Kwan chips away at Mr. Suka’s harsh exterior with persistence and kindness that the old man eventually returns. Kwan solidifies Mr. Suka’s respect when he recovers the goats after they go missing, and Mr. Suka asks Kwan to tell him his real, Korean name. The well-paced narrative artfully weaves in Korean terms and cultural references, such as the children’s song “Santoki,” which Kwan’s parents sing on the way to market and Kwan whistles to entice the goats. Chen uses soft washes and blends of bright colors to bring warmth to the detailed landscapes and cartoon portraits. In an authors’ note, the Parks explain that they drew inspiration from their father’s experiences working on a goat farm as a child.

In some ways, the author’s childhood was like one long summer at camp—he and his seven siblings were raised on a sprawling 84-acre Community Conservation Corps–built park property his parents bought at the end of the Depression and rehabilitated over the course of the 1940s. The seventh of eight children, Antil enjoyed an idyllic upbringing surrounded by the hills and waterfalls of Central New York. Jutting from a nearby cliff that overlooked the property was the eponymous big white rock, where the young Antil would sit and think about the world and his life, reflecting on events from the eruption of a new war in Korea to a satisfying and profitable day of selling hot dogs with a friend. His childhood was characterized in part by the schemes of his father, a commercial bakery owner, which included building a bomb shelter to protect the family during the height of the Cold War. (“My father’s plan was that the flat roof of the bomb shelter would serve as a sun deck off the living room, as if it would mask the structure’s hidden agenda, its fictional purpose of withstanding a hydrogen bomb blast.”) The author, who would eventually grow to a height of 6 feet, 10 inches, tried to resist “the tall fellow’s sport” (“playing basketball would be a charade,” he thought, “a ridiculous cliche”). Eventually, however, he was urged onto the court, where he played well enough to help his team win a championship his junior year of high school. His senior year saw him switching schools and sleeping on a cot above a partially constructed ice cream parlor in Syracuse—one of his father’s failed business ventures. With humor and a great sense of time and place, Antil spins stories of his coming of age in this unlikely setting.

The author has a novelistic sense of detail, writing of his family members in a way that makes them seem slightly larger than life: “My father’s entrance coming in the house and into the light of the dining room was as matter-of-fact as a ship’s captain…He offered no formal greeting or smile; he paced about as if the meeting was a necessary interruption to a whirlwind he was riding on.” The narrative is episodic, offering short vignettes that range from the incidental to the comic to the unexpectedly poignant. After a fairly jocular story about the “sex talk” he received from his father, Antil reveals the significantly more earnest counsel his sisters received, which he only learned of years later: “If you get in trouble, bring the baby home. We’ll raise it.” Together, these anecdotes perhaps don’t amount to quite enough to engage an audience with no connection to the author’s previous books or to the Central New York region. Even so, there are many wonderful moments here that capture not only America at mid-century but also an off-beat family whose way of life, for better or for worse, feels quite remote from the present day.

In City of Glass, a traumatized mystery writer finds himself playing detective. He becomes embroiled in a case involving a femme fatale and her deeply troubled husband, who had been inhumanely raised by a mad professor in an attempt to rediscover “God’s language.” Ghosts—presented mostly in picture-book format (one large image above a chunk of text) rather than the sequential panels of the other two stories—follows a private investigator who stakes out the apartment of a man who seems to do little other than write and read. As the investigator (named “Blue”—all characters’ names are colors) compiles reports of his mundane observations, he comes to question exactly who is observing whom. In The Locked Room, a hack writer inherits the literary legacy (and wife and child) of his vanished and exceptional childhood friend, attaining a blissful life—until he can’t resist trying to track down the friend, who forbids being found on penalty of death. Themes of identity run through the books, as do literary references and contemplations on the writerly life—particularly the idea that a writer does not have a life of his own. (“Paul Auster” also appears as a character.) The stories resist easy interpretation, but opaque moments, like characters’ descents into madness or explanations of complex theories, receive rich visualization from the talented trio of artists: Mazzucchelli’s crisp, confident lines; Mattotti’s sumptuous shading; and Karasik’s inventive paneling.

One spring, brown-skinned Annie discovers something new: periodical cicadas. She follows their lives with the help of her great-grandmother, grandmother, and pregnant mother. Much waiting is involved, which frustrates Annie. First, holes appear in the ground. Next, insects emerge, climb trees, shed their shells, and unfurl their wings. A few days later, they begin to sing, calling out from the trees. Annie wants to get closer to observe them, but she isn’t yet big enough to manage climbing a tree. Still, “some things are worth the wait”—a realization the child comes to with the help of her loving family. Seventeen years later, she climbs cicada-filled trees with a younger sibling. Bontje’s clear, expressive text provides the basic facts about the cicada life cycle, supplemented by helpful backmatter that offers a timeline of the insect’s life. Whang’s cozy illustrations include photos of Annie’s great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother as children, helping readers follow along as the story moves back and forth in time and the older family members recall the cicadas of their childhoods. Along the way, this multiracial family prepares for the new baby—a narrative device that nicely underscores the theme of the cyclical nature of life.