What Will These Hands Make?

PreS-Gr 1–Themes of community, creativity, and craft are at the heart of this book about a family preparing for a grandmother’s birthday celebration. With the repetitive question of “What will these hands make?,” a young girl explores all the possibilities of what hands can make. The child repurposes a worn sweater into an imaginative fish-shaped pillow before going out to the larger world, where a variety of handmade items are mentioned, from a knitted hat for baby, a bench, and a cake to things such as sidewalks, bicycles, and bridges. McClure’s (How to Be a Cat) signature art made from black paper with an exacto knife on a tan background is sprinkled with images of a variety of people doing hands-on projects. Pages alternate between text and wordless red-and-white spreads that give opportunities for contemplation on all the things in our world that hands can make. The language can be a bit stilted at times, and McClure breaks from her previous pattern at the end to ask questions like “Will these hands make a safe place to be?,” “Will these hands make a community?,” and “What will your hands make?”