Bingham, Winsome, and Wiley Blevins. The Table. Illustrated by Jason Griffin.
Neal Porter Books, 2024. 978-0-823-45642-0. $19.99. 56 p. Grades K-5.

What story would your kitchen table tell? Many family tables would tell of meals, homework, crafts, holiday celebrations, times of great joy and sorrow. Perhaps your own table would tell a remarkably similar story? The Table begins in a coal miner’s home with biscuits on the table, a child reluctant to eat peas, a grandmother learning to read, and a mother carefully stacking canned peaches and home-grown cucumbers for the needy while sorting through a pile of her own unpaid bills. When the family loses their home they leave the table on the side of the road, where it is found by a new family in need of a table. After carefully cleaning and restoring the sturdy table the new family begins making their own memories around the “new old” table. Crosswords and homework, bills, biscuits and unfinished vegetables once again become a part of the table’s story.

THOUGHTS: Jason Griffin’s beautiful mixed-media on paper illustrations brilliantly highlight the family table as the central character of this story. The Table reminds us that we all have more in common than not, and our families are truly more similar than different. 

Picture Book