The Stuff of Stars by Marion Dane Bouer, illustrated by Ekua Holmes

The Stuff of Stars is a Picture Book written for ages 3 to 8. It won the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award in 2019 and I will be reviewing it as a Coretta Scott King Winner.

The Stuff of Stars explains how the universe was formed out of time specks of dust, very lightly touching on the big-bang theory, as well as how each individual human is formed out of a tiny speck into their whole self. It beautifully combines both scientific and spiritual undertones to explain how the galaxy, life, and each of us came to be.

I selected this book to read after seeing the stunning cover art. That, along with an intriguing title, was enough to entice me to check this book out from the library and read it with my own daughters.

In this review, I will be evaluating illustration, style, and tone.

Ekua Holmes won the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award for her work in The Stuff of Stars. Holmes typically illustrates with collage, an artistic form she applied to The Stuff of Stars, but with the unique addition of creating her own marbleized paper on which she placed cutout silhouettes. The marbleized background works beautifully to represent the vast and abstract nature of the universe that her illustrations represent. She adds a concrete focal point to the page by using silhouettes to represent Bauer's text, including images of planets, birds, and fossils, but keeps the overall feel of each page fluid. Notably, there are no rigid, straight lines in her illustrations, only curves, which adds to the feeling of creation and change expressed in the book. The images are evocative and surreal, which adds to the spiritual tone of The Stuff of Stars. Ekua's work is a collection of masterpieces deserving of artistic study despite their humble home within a children's picture book.

The Stuff of Stars is written in a poetic style and begs to be read aloud. Though it does not follow a rhyming pattern that is typical of poetry written for and preferred by young children, there is a feeling of melody to Bauer's writing that attracts the listener. I loved this book as an adult and wanted to read it to my children over and over. Likewise, my older daughter, who is 6, was curious about the text and illustrations and became engaged with the book. However, my 4-year-old daughter, who falls right in the middle of the reading age and for whom I felt the information in this book would be very accessible, was not engaged. The lyrical style did not draw her in, and while she enjoyed the almost 'I-spy' nature of the illustrations (i.e. 'Can you see the snail hidden on this page?'), the images were sometimes to abstract for my very visually literate daughter who wants to be able to follow along with the story by making sense of what is on the page. All of that to say, I loved the poetry within The Stuff of Stars, but the book may be lacking in the hook needed to keep the littlest of readers engaged in a text-heavy picture book, be that conflict in the plot, an engaging rhyme, or pictures that seize the imagination. There is a reason that successful poetry books for young children are almost exclusively written in rhyme.

Finally, The Stuff of Stars is written with a tone of reverence, awe, and love.  The book focuses on the creation of the universe, a topic that can easily lead to conflict and, as a result, is not typically written about in picture books for very young children. However, Bauer does a beautiful job of taking complicated theories and breaking them down into simple ideas that children can imagine and, with the support of Holmes' stunning illustrations, visualize. Verses like "No Earth with soaring hawks, / scuttling beetles, / trees reaching for the sky. / There was no sky" take impossibly large and unimaginable concepts and fit them into the hands and minds of children as young as 3 and 4 (Bauer, 2018, p. 5). Additionally, these verses have just enough detail to pique the curiosity of older children, urging them to ask about the lifecycle of stars, the solar system, or evolution. Still, the book reads like a lullaby, and while it is rooted in science and creation, when I read it I felt myself thinking of Nancy Tillman's The Night You Were Born, and the urge so many mothers have to fill their children's bookshelves with stories that reflect their boundless love. The language used in The Stuff of Stars is such that it celebrates the wonder of a vast and incomprehensible universe and simultaneously celebrates the wonder of each human here on earth. One is not seen as greater than the other, and each part of creation is regarded as a beautiful marvel, "you, / and me / loving you. / All of us / the stuff of stars" (Bauer, 2018, p. 33)

Marion Dane Bauer. (2018). The stuff of stars (E. Holmes, illus.). Candlewick Press.

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