SPARK, SHINE, GLOW!

A pithy appreciation in rhyme of light and light-related phenomena.

For all the sometimes extreme terseness of her lines—not to mention the impression of simplicity that Yang imparts in his stylized scenes of small, dot-eyed, round-headed figures posing on a beach and at a campground, looking at fireflies and stars, peering through a microscope and a telescope, holding a flashlight here, there an umbrella—Schaefer takes a conceptually rich, STEM-centric approach to the topic: “Prisms and raindrops / both refract light, / which helps form rainbows— / an optical delight!” Along with pointing to select sources of light from the sun to fireworks, she explains the difference between transparent and opaque and distinguishes natural light from artificial (the latter being “made by man,” a quaintly sexist formulation she even uses twice). Though she leaves most of the electromagnetic spectrum beyond the visible wavelengths unmentioned, she does direct a nod to X-rays. If less enlightened readers and audiences are going to need more help unpacking her denser lyrics than she provides in the hardly more expansive glossary at the end, still the informational load enriches the observational one, and a proper sense of appreciation for her topic consistently shines through. The toylike human figures are diverse in skin hue. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Challenging but illuminating.