Sailing Home on an Elephant // (Pre-order. April 13 2027)

When a little girl loses her grandmother, her world is drained of all its color and whimsy, until a magical dream carries her back toward the light in this tender and imaginative picture book about grief.

Mama Belle tells her granddaughter that color made the world happy, and Ladymay knows this is true. Their life together is full of wonder, and May dresses in the prettiest rainbow-colored outfits and chases morning sunrises and beautiful butterflies. Then Mama Belle goes away and May learns she wont be coming back. May gets sent to live with strangers who already have a house full of children. All the color fades from her world.

Then an old cassette tape brings back Mama Belles voice, and that night, an elephant comes to May in a dream. It takes her across Virginia and through the ocean, to the land of the ancestors Mama Belle told her about. Can this elephant help May remember the beauty of her grandmothers lessons and return color to her world?

Lucinda Roy is an award-winning, multi-genre author whose essays, poems, and articles have appeared in numerous national and international publications. Shes the author of The Dreambird Chronicles trilogy, a speculative novel series about the legendary Flying Africans; the poetry collectionFabric; and the memoirNo Right to Remain Silent: What Weve Learned from the Tragedy at Virginia Tech, among others. Lucinda Roy delivers keynotes and plenary addresses on creative writing, race and gender issues, and higher education reform. An award-winning teacher, she has been interviewed extensively by media outlets in the US and UK about the importance of campus safety and how best to respond to troubled students. She is also an accomplished visual artist. One of her lifelong projects is a series of oil paintings about spiritual endurance during and after the Middle Passage. One of these paintings became the inspiration for her picture bookSailing Home on an Elephant.

• Publisher: Denene Millner Books/Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
• Publish Date:April 13, 2027
• Pages: 56
• Dimensions:8.5 in H | 11 in W | 0.1 in T
• Language: English
• Type: Hardcover
• EAN/UPC: 9781665933360