#992 of 1001 · April 19, 2023

Gentle Readers, today marks the start of my final ten posts before I reach one thousand book reviews (and go on a little social media hiatus). I decided a long time ago that this last stretch would be devoted to ten truly extraordinary books. I have been curating a special collection for a little while, and I am thrilled to begin sharing it with you now. Let us begin with a wordless work of art: A Stone for Sascha by @storybreathing. Grieving the loss of a beloved pet, a young girl goes to the beach with her family. In a flashback to the beginning of Earth’s formation, we see a blazing meteor collide with the young planet, depositing a golden ore in the ground. Over millions of years, seismic activity pushes the gleaming mineral to the surface. Humans discover the stone, and it is transformed by every civilization that touches it: a sacred monolith for an ancient tribe, an Egyptian obelisk, a brick in the chest of a Buddhist statue, the keystone in the arch of a Chinese bridge, a dragon statue in a jungle shrine. The treasure is eventually lost in the depths of the ocean, where it is tossed, ground smooth, and polished by the shifting currents. Finally, in the present day, the young girl discovers the stone in the shallows, where it brings her a morsel of comfort as she sits alone beneath the sweeping sky. Becker’s enthralling digital illustrations provide a stunning glimpse of Big History, taking an epic perspective and distilling it down to a beautiful kernel of humanistic truth. #stone #mineral #planet #earth #humanity #history #time #book #books #childrensbooks #beautifulbooks #picturebook #picturebooks #picturebookillustration #picturebookillustrations #picturebookart #childrensbookillustration #childrensliterature #illustration #kidlit #kidsbooks #bookworm #booklover #booklovers #bibliophile #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookstagrammers #instabook #instabooks