Shine, Star, Shine!
Dom Conlon and Anastasia Izlesou
Graffeg

This is the latest in the excellent Wild Wanderers series about various aspects of the natural world and it’s another wonderful book.

Deep in space from the heart of a nebula many stars are born: big stars and small stars each shining forth from millions of miles away across the universe, reaching out to us with their rays of colour. And so it is with our star, the Sun, enabler of life on planet Earth that shines down from 93 million miles away. She keeps us warm, causing changes in the weather; she makes the crops grow all over the world from Idaho to the Punjab, as well as all other planet life;

she pumps air from floating green ocean gardens giving rise to wind and creating clouds and sometimes, rainbows.
Beware though, sometimes the strength of her rays can cause damage for our star can also be a ‘world-burner’ but the world she reveals is mostly one of rich life and potential.

I love the way in which both poet author Conlon’s lyrical language and illustrator Izlesou’s atmospheric art both focus on this single star of ours, turning the otherwise ordinary into the truly extraordinary: truly a painting of words and pictures. Or rather a series of paintings that remind us of how our Earth moves around our Star and what that means for different environments; or shows the gradual change from day to night,

from season to season, through countless lives and trillions of years. It’s not until the final spreads that we are shown the night sky with its ‘trillions of stars with planets of their own whose stories are yet to be heard’. That too is something to ponder upon and perhaps dream about along with the small boy and the cat that we see throughout this powerfully beautiful book. It’s one that’s sure to provoke awe and wonder in young listeners.