The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books praises Jashar Awan’s EVERY MONDAY MABEL in starred review: “an arm-pumping, truck-horn toot to each person reveling in their own ‘garbage’”

Every Monday, Mabel wakes up early, tugging a chair from her room through the whole house, passing each of her family members along the way. Older sister Mira, with headphones slung over pink-dyed hair, rolls her eyes as Mabel goes by, annoyed because on Mondays, “Mabel does the most boring thing.”  Mom smiles warmly watching Mabel pour herself some Cocoa-O’s in the kitchen, because each Monday, “Mabel does the cutest thing.” Dad, catching up on news and sports, laughs while holding open the front door, as every week, “Mabel does the funniest thing.” Finally, Mabel and her chair arrive at their destination, the top of the driveway, where she sits and waits crunching cereal . . . until—“HONK HONK!”—the garbage truck arrives in a visual explosion of energy, wrought with contrasting highlighter-yellow backgrounds and magenta action lines. With one mighty claw, the truck lifts the trash can into the air, and Mabel triumphantly lifts her cereal bowl, scattering O’s. After the truck blasts its friendly farewell, Awan depicts Mabel with a deeply contented gravitas: “what a sight,” she muses from atop a wind-blown hill. Mabel’s affect is so buoyantly conveyed in character design and narration that the garbage truck feels a bit like a natural wonder—a shared perspective by others across the neighborhood, as the book’s ending reveals. Awan moreover uses consistent visual storytelling to acknowledge that one person’s trash is another’s treasure, depicting Mabel’s entire family engaged in their own Monday routines. (Mira reclines among a sea of eye-catching alternative music and art posters while plant-lady mom tends lovingly to hanging ferns, curling vines, and potted shrubs.) Confidently illustrated and presented without didacticism, Mabel’s story is an arm-pumping, truck-horn toot to each person reveling in their own “garbage.”