Counting on Community

Counting on Community is Innosanto Nagara’s follow-up to his hit ABC book, A is for Activist. Counting up from one stuffed piñata to ten hefty hens — and always counting on each other — children are encouraged to recognize the value of their community, the joys inherent in healthy eco-friendly activities, and the agency they posses to make change. A broad and inspiring vision of diversity is told through stories in words and pictures. And of course, there is a duck to find on every page!

“Counting on Community encourages our children to embrace the power within each of us to create the world anew, to become SOLUTIONARIES.” Grace Lee Boggs Lifelong social activist and author of The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century

“Besides being a fun, rhythmic, and lively text to read, the book’s illustrations present a world of diversity and complex, inclusive beauty.”  Julia Alvarez, author of numerous books including, A Wedding in Haiti: the Story of a Friendship and How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, and founding member of Border of Lights, an ongoing movement to promote peace and collaboration between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, borderoflights.org

“...powerful concept book....Racial and ethnic diversity is celebrated on every page, and the lyrical text will inspire budding and longtime activists alike.” School Library Journal

Innosanto Nagara was born and raised in Indonesia, and moved to the US in 1988 to study zoology and philosophy at UC Davis. Upon graduation, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he worked as a graphic designer for a range of social change organizations, before founding the Design Action Collective, a worker-owned cooperative design studio in Oakland, California, that is dedicated to "serving the Movement." Inno lives in a cohousing community in Oakland where his child is the youngest of eight children to be born into the household, so he has "studied" a lot of children's books over the past twelve years.