#692 of 1001 · June 23, 2022

The Blue Stone: A Journey Through Life by Jimmy Liao mines surprisingly subtle shades of emotion from an inanimate object. The story spans years, hundreds of years, thousands of years. A large blue rock is discovered in the forest and continually chiseled into various statues and sculptures for visual consumption. Liao accords the stone a measure of consciousness; each time it recalls its home among the trees, it crumbles out of sadness and lies in pieces until another stoneworker arrives to transform it yet again. An elephant in a public square, a bird in a garden, a fish by a wharf, a moon in a gallery, a cat in an orphanage…the blue stone experiences these and many other forms until finally only a few specks of rock are left to drift on the wind back to the forest where they began as a solid whole. Liao’s poignant text (translated from Chinese by Sarah L. Thomson) and engaging illustrations combine for a simultaneously intimate and epic narrative of poetic realism. #blue #stone #journey #life #rock #statue #statues #sculpture #sculptures #year #years #time #book #books #childrensbooks #picturebook #childrensbookillustration #childrensliterature #illustration #kidlit #kidsbooks #bookworm #booklover #booklovers #bibliophile #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookstagrammers #instabook #instabooks