Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Addressed directly to an unborn child, this luminous Italian import presents a fetus's in-utero growth with whimsy and sophistication. Each spread marks awe-inspiring developments, starting with weeks five and six: "You are as big as a sesame seed/ Your heart already trots." Rendered in glowing color washes, accompanying illustrations throughout feature ethereal images of flowers and birds, frolicking mammals and rushing swimmers, and pink-tinged skies, all bordered at the left with a recurring, gently curving abstract shape, which readers will eventually recognize as a parent's growing stomach. Quintavalle's milestones alternate between basic facts ("You cannot see"), and flights of poetic fancy ("Your eyes conserve the color of the night sky"), and many carry the deeply reassuring messages that each child is both wholly unique and eagerly anticipated: "Mother earth is ready to greet you and so am I." Young children won't need to understand the meaning in every line to appreciate this original offering, which brims with warmth, love, and wonder. A list of developmental facts concludes. Ages 4-up. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Horn Book Review
The narrator addresses a developing human baby, describing the nine months before birth during which "you move in your space, without a sound" and soon "you can sense the light." Sanna's handsome watercolor paintings use the curved silhouette of an expectant mother to connect birth to the wider natural world; the belly becomes a seagull's wings, a shoreline, a hillside, and so on. (c) Copyright 2019. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An artistic meditation on gestation.Turning publishing convention on its head, the illustrations came first in this stunning, extra-long picture book. Sanna's watercolors, originally created for a wordless book published in Italy, depict the nine months of human gestation with sequential spreads of a pregnant woman's growing torso, crescendoing to birth. Her belly increasingly protrudes with successive page turns, but it is not merely a woman standing still; instead, the illustrations can be read both as an expectant mother's body and as the curved wings of a sea gull, the arc of a whale's tail, and the sloping descent of a hillside. This merging of the body and the natural world emphasizes humanity's place in the circle of life while presenting breathtaking visuals. The accompanying, poetic text guides readers through successive images, shifting focus to the developing fetus through direct address. "Month 4" reads, for example: "And while you are still learning to breathe / Patterns are drawn on your fingertips for you and you alone." Corresponding backmatter pages offer "Developmental Facts that Inspired the Text" (which, unfortunately, are unsourced). For Month 4 this expository text reads, in part, "The fetus's lungs are not completely formed yet, but it has started to practice respiratory movements. Fingerprints and footprints are being defined." It's a sophisticated offering, perhaps better suited for baby showers than nurseries, but it's lovely all the same. Sublime. (Picture book. 5-adult) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
