Tulsi, a girl in the mountains of northern New Mexico, became pen pals with Vanessa, who lives by the sea in Tanzania. Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw’s Like You, Like Me, which is based on the real-life friendship between her daughter Tulsi and her pen pal, Vanessa, shows how alike two girls and their worlds can be, despite living in very different places. Through collages made from painted papers and oil sticks, Kostecki-Shaw has created a vibrant exchange that celebrates global connectedness. It’s a delightful follow-up to her earlier book, Same, Same But Different, which featured two pen pals in India and the United States.
On the title page spread, the words that each child writes form a curving, yarn-like thread that crosses the page, stretching from one to another. The endpapers feature bright collage maps of New Mexico and Tanzania, along with a number of geographical facts about each place that will ground young readers and perhaps inspire them to seek out more information. Children will enjoy the intriguing local details of each girl’s home: Tulsi describes ponderosa pines that “smell like butterscotch candy” while Vanessa writes, “my city wears the sweet smell of frangipani.” They compare notes on pets, siblings, school and pastimes in spare prose that is both informative and authentically childlike. Kostecki-Shaw enlivens her cheery, earthy collages with patterns and stamped textures, from the multicolored feathers of a red-tailed hawk to blue spots on a galloping cheetah. An imaginative sense of dreamlike wonder pervades the book from time to time, such as when Tulsi flies on the back of a soaring hawk while Vanessa clings to a cheetah’s neck.
The girls repeat a refrain, “Like you, like me,” to each other as they discover similarities between their lives, and Kostecki-Shaw finds a variety of creative ways to accentuate these connections. The first spread, for instance, features Tulsi on the left-hand page, sitting on a couch as she writes to her friend, with snow-covered mountains visible past her window. On the right-hand page, Vanessa also writes from a couch, while an ocean sparkles outside her window. In the center of this spread, each couch seems to blend into the other. Elsewhere, the two girls’ shadows merge across the pages as they each play different musical instruments. By the end of the book, the friends gaze directly into each other’s eyes, saying, “I see you!” and “I see you too!” Like You, Like Me is a wonderful celebration of global friendship.
