#189 of 1001 · February 5, 2021

For a tale of light fantasy with a sobering undercurrent of folly and woe, check out The Stars in the Sky, an English fairy tale collected by folklorist Joseph Jacobs and illustrated by Airdrie Amtmann. A young girl nurtures a deep longing to play with the stars themselves. Consumed by this wild dream, she leaves home and embarks on a fanciful search; along her path she encounters a mill-dam, a brooklet, the mystical Good Folk, and the elliptically named “Four Feet” (who turns out to be a horse) and “No Feet at all” (a large fish). Sadly, the path leading up to the stars proves impossible to climb, and she finds herself falling until she awakens on the floor of her home, back where she started. This abrupt ending establishes the entire adventure as a rudely truncated dream, and therefore something of a shaggy dog story. However, the girl’s transition from discontent to determination to despair are rendered with touching simplicity and poignance. Rather than adapt Jacobs’ text (originally published in More English Fairy Tales), Amtmann imports it directly, changing only a single word and altering the spelling of two others. The pen-and-ink illustrations convey a subdued blend of peculiar magic and cold reality. #stars #sky #horse #fish #stairs #dream #book #books #childrensbooks #beautifulbook #beautifulbooks #picturebook #picturebooks #picturebookillustration #picturebookillustrations #picturebookart #childrensbookillustration #childrensliterature #illustration #kidlit #kidsbooks #bookworm #booklover #booklovers #bibliophile #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookstagrammers #instabook #instabooks