There Was a Shadow orients children toward the gift that shadows can be: their ephemeral beauty and nuanced delight. Spanning the day from dawn to dream-time, the book follows a girl's life in the countryside, portrayed with a timelessness reminiscent of Robert McCloskey's Caldecott-award-winning Time of Wonder.

As readers wend their way with the girl through the gently rolling landscape, they come upon hill shadows and bug shadows on the way to meeting the "moving, dancing, playing shadows" of friends. Each new shadow gets introduced with the titular refrain, "There was a shadow." Some shadows are hard, like the welcome shade of a stately trees canopy at noon; others are "faint, rippling," a play of light.

Not only physical shadows appear:

"There was a shadow.
It was a thinking shadow,
a shadow you could feel but not see.

"It was worry.

"But like a bird's shadow,
the worry shadow darted,
flickered, and was gone."

Some authors and illustrators seem to have an uncanny ability to recall the palpable sense of mystery in childhood. Author Bruce Handy and illustrator Lisk Feng are certainly among them. Handy's The Happiness of a Dog with a Ball in its Mouth, his first for kids, was named a Best Children's Book of 2021 by The New York Times. Feng's illustrations have received such awards as the Silver Medal from the Society of Illustrators, the Communication Arts Excellence Award, and a 3X3 Silver Medal.

While this book will land just right with readers ages five to seven, we will return to it again and again for its atmosphere and celebration of life. We hope that a copy makes its way to your hands, too.

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