Pooja Makhijani is the author of the picture book Bread Is Love. Her writing has also appeared in the New York Times, NPR, Publishers Weekly, the Washington Post, and more. Here, Makhijani reflects on her newest picture book, the deeply personal Together for Mama, and finding the right words to represent the realities of postpartum depression from a child’s perspective.

Shortly after my daughter was born, I fell into a deep depression. Profound. Terrifying. Hopeless. With the help of professionals, family and friends, and time, I emerged from that darkness. Then, I did what countless artists before me have done to make sense of themselves and their world: I wrote about it all: about my own harrowing experience; about others’ experiences; about stigma; and about the foods that saved my life.

As my own creative life turned towards picture books, I began to wonder if it were possible to tell a story about maternal mental health through the eyes of a child protagonist. In recent years, literary, character-driven texts about social and emotional learning have become commonplace; in a 2022 piece in the Guardian, publishers reported that “sales of books for children under 10 years old that address emotions and mental health issues [were] up almost 40% year on year since 2021.”

I set out to find books to inform and inspire the book I hoped to write—books that explored boundaries, agency, and communal care, especially for a younger audience. I became especially interested in books that trusted children with difficult emotional truths while still preserving wonder, intimacy, and safety.

While writing, four exceptional picture books served as aesthetic and emotional blueprints for how children learn to interpret the moods and vulnerabilities of the adults around them.

In the Blue by Erin Hourigan (Little, Brown, 2022), a 2023 Schneider Family Book Award winner, uses color—yellow for joy; blue for sadness; red for anger—to indicate the ups and downs of about a girl navigating life in and around her father’s depression. Mama’s Days by Andi Diehn, illustrated by Ángeles Ruiz (Reycraft, 2022), employs a frame narrative: a girl tells a story about a princess, a queen, and an unpredictable dragon to help process her mother’s mental illness. She cares deeply for her mother, but she is not responsible for her mother’s emotions. Balloons for Papa by Elizabeth Gilbert Bedia, illustrated by Erika Meza (Trigger, 2020; HarperCollins, 2023), beautifully captures how children intuit when something is wrong with their caregivers. After Arthur’s mother is admitted to the hospital, Papa’s world turns gray. Arthur returns color to their days, literally and metaphorically, with a bouquet of balloons. Meza’s art is outstanding: the balloons pop off the page as bright spots of hope. And in The Summer of Diving by Sara Stridsberg, illustrated by Sara Lundberg, and translated from the Swedish by B.J. Epstein (Triangle Square, 2022), Zoe copes with her father’s absence while he is in a psychiatric hospital for severe depression. She is encouraged by a new friend to use her imagination to “swim” through her sadness and longing until her father is ready to come home.

Three tender middle-grade novels shaped my understanding of emotional interiority, silence, caregiving, and repair.

In The Whole Story of Half a Girl (Yearling, 2011), Veera Hiranandani’s debut novel, half-Indian, half-Jewish American Sonia Nadhamuni’s father spirals into debilitating depression after the sudden loss of his job; it reaches a crisis point when he briefly disappears, which forces the family to confront the reality of his illness head-on. The tension, confusion, and fear within the household are palpable; Sonia and her family begin to find a sense of wholeness through honest, age-appropriate conversations about her father’s condition and the steps he must take toward recovery. In the historical fiction novel Nest by Esther Ehrlich (Random House/Lamb, 2014), Naomi “Chirp” Orenstein’s world disintegrates after her mother’s physical illness (multiple sclerosis) and severe depression result in death by suicide. It is Chirp’s neighbor and classmate, Joey, whose own family has “significant issues,” who helps her find closure and promise. And in The Science of Breakable Things by Tae Keller, science-minded Natalie enters an egg drop competition to win prize money to give a rare cobalt blue orchid to her mother, who is struggling with depression, and learns that some things can’t be fixed with a simple experiment. When Mom apologizes to Natalie—“I’ve been depressed, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you, always. I am so sorry.”—the family’s healing can begin.

I humbly placed my manuscript-in-progress in conversation with these books—this “canon” of children’s books that address mental health with such sensitivity and intelligence. The result is Together for Mama, illustrated by Nadia Alam (Rocky Pond, June 23), which explores postpartum depression through the eyes of a child. Asha is excited to become a big sister, but she notices that her mother seems unusually sad and withdrawn after the birth of Baby Maya. As Mama struggles, Asha worries about her and wonders if she will ever feel better. With the support of Papa, Dadi, and Nani, the family comes together to care for both the new baby and Mama—showing Asha that happiness is once again possible when loved ones help one another.

I hope that my book offers a gentle, age-appropriate introduction to perinatal mental illness, and helps readers understand that a parent’s depression is not their fault and that recovery can happen with care and understanding. Together for Mama features a South Asian family, which was incredibly important to me. Many studies have shown that PPD diagnosis rates among Asian American mothers are significantly lower than the diagnosis rate in non‐Hispanic White mothers, but it’s unclear whether this is due to underreporting, underdiagnosis, or underutilization of mental health care. There continues to be much stigma in our communities; I wanted to present a culturally specific, compassionate, nonjudgmental portrait of loving and supportive care.

Together for Mama now also sits alongside books that were published after my text was written, including Mama Moon by Noah Grigni (Macmillan/Holt, 2025), which uses the metaphor of the moon to explain a mother’s bipolar disorder to a child (her “bluest days” and “bright” phases), and My Mom Is Like a Kite by Lisl H. Detlefsen and Nathalie Dion (Groundwood, out now), which likens Mom’s moods to a kite that soars out of reach or a boat that bobs and sinks, and features a kind therapist who tells the child that it’s not her responsibility to monitor her mother’s moods.

The conversation continues.

Together for Mama by Pooja Makhijani, illus. by Nadia Alam. Rocky Pond, $18.99 June 23; ISBN 979-8-2170-0356-3