Picasso Rita's Sketchbook

Nine-year-old Picasso Rita Graham sees what other people miss.

While her classmates play with toys and video games, Picasso Rita fills her sketchbook with the faces she finds on the streets of Harborview - the tired man on the bench, the old woman with the shopping cart, the gentle-eyed stranger by the fountain. To her, every face holds a story worth telling.

Then one rainy Tuesday, she sketches a tall man in a dark hoodie slipping through the back door of a jewelry store. Soon her pages fill with something far more dangerous than portraits: evidence. When the hooded stranger turns up at the bank where her mother works, Picasso Rita has to decide whether a quiet girl with a pencil is brave enough to stop him.

A heartfelt story about art, courage, and the power of truly seeing people, Picasso Rita's Sketchbook shows young readers that their gifts - however unusual - can change the world around them.