Inviting Pictures: The Magical Text of Marion Dane Bauer's The Stuff of Stars

There is no question that Ekua Holmes has brought pure magic to the pages of The Stuff of Stars.  Her CSK Illustrator Award-winning art is otherworldly.Created on hand-marbled paper,  the images seem to float, drift, explode upon the page as they render the text in visual terms. They are brilliant, abstract, compelling. I am driven by words, I'll admit it, and I can't help myself. I've spent an hour peering into the depths of those color swirls, finding new patterns each time I look. Every time I open them, the pages of this book make me feel as if I've been invited to visit an art gallery.But it's the invitation in the text I want to talk about. Because Marion Dane Bauer's  very spare text is written on nothing short of a cosmic scale. Just look at this:

...invisible as thought,weighty as God.

We're told that text has to be illustratable. As a writer, you offer up the possibility of an image. You leave room for the artist to enhance your words. You say only what the art can't say.But this much room? How do you take the concept of all creation and even begin to translate it into pictures? What a nerve, to even think about this as a picture book! And such a perfection of words. About to embark on an exploration of the Big Bang and the formation of the Universe, Bauer's words "weighty as God" challenge the narrow-minded to check preconceptions at the door!But all this may be precisely why this text invited the creation of this particular style on the part of this particular artist. How else can you show "the beginning/ of the beginning/ of all beginnings" other than in pure color, pure abstraction?Holmes uses the brilliance of her palette, the luminosity of contrast and the sharp edges of collage shapes, until, in the final moving moment, we encounter the adult and child figures of the book's jacket. Ungendered, unmarked by race or other elements of identity, not even necessarily human, they are simply alive in the face of a marvelous, living universe. The concluding words carry the same wonderstruck realization: "All of us/ the stuff of stars."This is no ordinary text. It seems only fitting that it ended up inviting such extraordinarily beautiful illustration.