#670 of 1001 · June 1, 2022

Were you fascinated by light and dark as a child? Did you marvel at the interplay between them? Did you imagine them as two worlds straddling an ethereal border? If so, @suzyleebooks will show you an aspect of yourself in her powerfully alluring Shadow. A young girl explores the landscape of her pretend play in her family’s storage room. The light casts shadows onto the floor, and soon a silhouetted jungle landscape takes form. When a menacing wolf creature threatens the girl, she joins forces with the other shadows to create an enormous monster. Truly frightened, the wolf accepts an invitation to join the gleeful, harmonious dance. Finally, the girl is called to dinner, and all the marvelous shadows revert to mundane shapes. However, once the girl departs, the mysterious shadow game continues in her absence. In this nearly-wordless book, Lee employs her trademark use of the gutter between the two pages as a boundary between two diegetic spaces—its function here as the border of a shadowy underworld demands that the entire book be held sideways, the pages flipped upward to progress. Stark black, white, and gray represent the reality at the beginning of the story, while warm, brilliant yellow begins to creep in as a visual representation of the force of the girl’s imagination. #shadow #shadows #silhouette #silhouettes #light #dark #darkness #play #imagination #book #books #childrensbooks #picturebook #picturebooks #picturebookillustration #picturebookart #childrensbookillustration #childrensliterature #illustration #kidlit #kidsbooks #bookworm #booklover #booklovers #bibliophile #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookstagrammers #instabook #instabooks