A Hymn to Honor a World that Is Precious

I look forward with deep anticipation to September 4^th, the official publication date for my newest picture book, The Stuff of Stars. Ekua Holmes’ artwork resonates with power and joy, and this is a book that has intense meaning for me. I’ve written about it before on my Just Thinking blog here and in a 2017 post, where I said:“How could I not be awed by the vastness of space, by the power of the forces that brought our planet into being, by the serendipity that allows this piece of rock we call home to sustain life?... Once more I sat down to write, concentrating this time on Earth, our Earth. Not to write a sermon about how we aren’t taking care of it. We have too many sermons masquerading as children’s books, sermons bent on making those who follow us responsible for the world they are inheriting. Rather I wanted to write a hymn, something that would live in the veins of my young readers. A hymn to honor a world that is precious beyond all singing of it.”Fortunately, the early starred review from Publishers Weekly seems to indicate that I was able to successfully carry out that goal, as the review notes: “In spare, supple verse, Newbery Honor author Bauer (Winter Dance) tells a big story—that of everything there is, how it all came to be…. In a brilliant stroke of visual imagination, Caldecott Honor artist Holmes (Wonder: Poems Celebrating Poets) uses the swirls and waves of marbled paper to represent the ebb and flow of cosmic matter. Her spreads appear to move and shift on a grand scale, while Bauer suggests that, just possibly, the power of creation and the power of love are not so different.”In a little more than a month, I hope you will take a look at the book to see for yourself what you think about our accomplishment.