Shadow Book

I am indeed very much and more than pleasantly surprised at how much I have (on both a personal and reading pleasure level) both enjoyed and also been somewhat and deliciously, tremblingly a tiny bit creeped and shivered out by both text and images of Marcia Brown's Shadow.

For Marcia Brown's poetical narrative (which glows and flows naturally and furthermore and importantly neither feels nor in any way to and for me sounds like simply a translation from the French language original, and that is something rather majorly difficult to achieve, especially with regard to poetry) and her accompanying illustrations engage in a slow, involved, but always steady and deliberate pas de deux dance of what one's shadow does (and what it can do), a wondrous and eye-opening celebration of both its postive and negative qualities, and above all demonstrating that positive and negative, that good and bad, go hand in hand (are eternally linked) and that one is not really even possible without the other (and that shadows of all kinds are therefore an integral part of life, and thus of course necessary and essential). More than well deserving of its Caldecott Medal award, and the only possible caveat I have is that Shadow might indeed be a bit too frightening for very young or exceedingly sensitive children (as indeed, while I have absolutely adored Shadow as an older adult, especially the detailed and evocative illustrations would likely have been much too creepy for me as a child, and perhaps even as a young teenager). And although I personally would also have much appreciated and desired Blaise Cendrars' original French language poem having been included as perhaps a small author's note, this has really in no way all that much affected my enjoyment and appreciation of Shadow (and thus also does not influence or change my sparkling and shining four star ranking either).