Watercress is a beautiful, quiet gut-punch of a book. It takes a mundane, slightly cringey moment—foraging for plants in a ditch by the side of the road—and turns it into a bridge between an immigrant's past and a child's present.

It’s rare to find a book that respects a child's capacity for complex emotions like shame and grief this well. If you want your kid to understand that their parents are actual human beings with lives that existed before they were born, put this on the shelf. It’s not 'exciting' in a traditional sense, but the illustrations are so detailed your kid will actually stay on the page.