Named to the Evanston Public Library’s Blueberry List: Kids’ Book that Inspire Love of Nature and Action for Planet Earth
Selected for the Notable Social Studies 2022 list
Named to the ALA Notable Children’s Books 2022
“Wowww!”—– Raina Telgemeier, #1 NY Times, #1 USA Today, #1 Publishers Weekly bestselling author/illustrator
KIRKUS STAR: Lustrous illustrations and meditative text reflect on the role of smoke in nature and civilization… Smoke dissipates quickly, but this poetic text will linger.
KIRKUS’S LIST OF 150 MOST ANTICIPATED FALL 2021 BOOKS
Smoke itself acts as narrator, telling us how it has served humankind since prehistoric times in signaling, beekeeping, curing and flavoring food, religious rites, fumigating insects, and myriad other ways.
Smoke speaks in mesmerizing riddles: “I lack a mouth, but I can speak…. I lack hands, but I can push out unwanted guests…. I’m gentler than a feather, but I can cause harm…’. This rhythmically powerful narration is complemented by illustrations in which swirling smoke was captured on art paper held over smoky candle flames, and the dancing smoke textures were then deepened and elaborated with watercolors and Photoshop finishes. With this unique method, Mercè López “let the smoke decide how the idea I had in mind would dance with it, giving freedom to the images.”
The resulting illustrations are astounding, and they resonate with the otherworldly text.
About the author
Mercè López graduated from Llotja Art School in Barcelona and has illustrated for design, theater, and film as well as twenty children’s books for Spanish and international book publishers. Her 2019 title Lion of the Sky: Haiku for All Seasons by Laura Purdie Salas received multiple starred reviews and was named a Center for Children’s Books Gryphon Honor Book, an NCTE Notable Poetry Book, a Kirkus Best Picture Book, and a Parents Magazine Best Kids’ Book, among other accolades. In a starred review of I Am Smoke (Tilbury House, 2021), Kirkus called her illustrations “Lustrous” and “Exquisitely beautiful.” In his 100 Scope Notes column for School Library Journal, Travis Jonker called I Am Smoke “One of the most astonishingly unconventional children’s books of 2021. Here’s to children’s books that expand our assumptions of what a children’s book can be.”
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