EVERY COLOR OF LIGHT

Every Color of Light, written by Hiroshi Osada, illustrated by Ryōji Arai, and translated by David Boyd, is a visual and lyrical marvel.

Every Color of Light opens with the simple statement, "Look, it's raining." Readers are then swept into a quiet and poetic expedition through a forest as a storm rolls through. There is a strong ebb and flow to this book, evident in both the text and the illustrations: we are close to the treetops as we peek through the rain; we are far away as lightening streaks across the sky; we are close again as the raindrops hit leaves and flowers on the ground; we are far once more as the storm begins to break up sunlight shimmers through the clouds. As the day proceeds and the storm subsides, the night gently bleeds in with a full white moon that makes the animals in the forest glow. Every spread shows a singular scene save for the first and last spreads, which both take advantage of a completely blank verso (lefthand) page, as well as significant amounts of white space on the recto (righthand) page. This evokes the same ebb and flow pattern we experience throughout the book, with the story slowly coming in and slowly going out (to a literal extent -- the text fades into nothing!) as readers are lulled to sleep.

Every Color of Light published earlier this fall from Enchanted Lion Books.

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