NFPB Wednesday - Across Time to Us

art by Sarah S. Brannen

         Visit Alyson Beecher on Wednesdays for Non-Fiction Picture Books at Kidlit Frenzy.  From her and others, you will discover and want to celebrate terrific nonfiction picture books!  

              Thanks to Candlewick Press for this marvelous advanced copy! When preparing for an exploration of space, I believe it will be a superb jumping-off point for studying our universe and outer space!

               It's impossible to ignore a book by Newbery Honor winner Marion Dane Bauer and Caldecott Honor winner Ekua Holmes which offers a story of our beginnings, from that spark from nothing through a BANG! To us! Marion Dane Bauer's use of verbs makes the story live, from "a cloud of gas" that "unfolded, unfurled, zigged, zagged". Then "stars caught fire. . .but still no planets. . . then no oceans, no mountains, no hippopotami." In brief poetic text, from nothing to many somethings, she arrives at another speck that "floated, invisible as dreams, special as Love." 

             Vivid celebrations of this journey burst with color in Ekua Holmes' marbled illustrations. Perhaps the emotion that sits with the words of this story make me imagine things within Holmes' art (is that a giraffe?). On other pages, the blending of molecules emerging can be seen within the swirling color, like galloping horses and dinosaur skeletons or an amorphous human shape.  This blending of science and art is quite a marvelous celebration of our evolution, made from "the stuff of stars".