Let’s Do Everything and Nothing

PreS-K–A marvelous journey unfolds throughout this gentle paean to family and imagination. In interspersed sequences, a girl and her mother scale a high, snow-capped mountain peak, dive with manta rays in deep ocean waters, and cast their eyes upward to the celestial beauty of stars and clouds. When the adventure has run its course, they descend from the heightened fantasy; the slope of a grassy hill mirrors a flight of household stairs in an inspired spread with starkly inverted colors on the facing pages. At home, the explorers share the comfort of warm baths, tea with orange slices, and tender embraces. Kuo’s digital art beckons readers to a meditative odyssey that shifts seamlessly from breathtaking spectacle to quiet intimacy. Text reflects action in brief, well-chosen phrases, by turns inviting (“Will you climb a hill with me?”), pensive, (“We’ll share the quiet twilight hour”) and joyful (“Being together is the best journey yet”). The delicate flattened art begins with a limited palette of gray, lavender, and midnight blue, against which the young girl stands out in a deep orange dress. Gradually, warmer hues appear in isolated spots: a climbing rope, a cloud of fireflies, a forest of coral in an undersea grotto. Finally, once the landscape of imagination bursts into full bloom and mother and daughter return to their everyday lives, a cozy array of saturated yellows, pinks, and greens comes forth.