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Vendor
Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
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CAN WE PLEASE GIVE THE POLICE DEPARTMENT TO THE GRANDMOTHERS?

Junauda Petrus Kristen Uroda

Based on the viral poem by Coretta Scott King honoree Junauda Petrus, this picture book debut imagines a radically positive future of community-based safety and mutual aid.
Petrus first published and performed this poem after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. With every subsequent police shooting, it has taken on new urgency, culminating in the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, blocks from Junauda's home.

In its picture book incarnation, Can We Please Give the Police Department to the Grandmothers? is a joyously radical vision of community-based safety and mutual aid. It is optimistic, provocative, and ultimately centered in fierce love. Debut picture book artist Kristen Uroda has turned Junauda's vision for a city without precincts into a vibrant and flourishing urban landscape filled with wise and loving grandmothers of all sorts.

Junauda Petrus is a writer, pleasure activist, filmmaker and performance artist, born on Dakota land of Black-Caribbean descent. Her work centers around wildness, queerness, Black-diasporic-futurism, ancestral healing, sweetness, shimmer and liberation. Her debut novel, The Stars and the Blackness Between Them, earned a Coretta Scott King honor. She lives in Minneapolis with her wife and family.

Kristen Uroda specializes in editorial illustration and works as a design researcher at Civilla, a Detroit-based design studio dedicated to changing the way public-serving institutions work using human-centered design thinking and design research. This is her first picture book.
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Published 2023-04-04 by Dutton Books for Young Readers

Comments

Unconditional love and community-based care lay at the heart of this radical and linguistically delicious picture book that invites conversations about relationships in communities of color. Uroda's luminous illustrations capture the verve, courage, and sensuality of grandmas (who sometimes look like grandpas - a nod to gender inclusivity and complex grand-families); the richness of Black and brown communities; and the resources they possess to heal their own wounds. A refreshing homage to the power of intergenerational relationships and potent alternative to policing.

A reverie of a book, offering criticism delivered with honey about our current state of affairs. It's not at all as far-fetched as it sounds.