CHANGING, CHANGING

In this spare ode to literal and figurative metamorphosis, a boy of African descent is not just a boy, but also a bull, the sky, a house, a light. A girl, also of African descent, is a moon, a white dress drying above the grass, a tribe. The same two cut-out photographs of both boy and girl are incorporated into intriguing collages where they are crudely transformed with paint or pieces of aluminum foil, trimmed into wormlike shapes or beamed into the Egyptian desert. The prose is simple: “He was a kite. / She was an island. / He was the wind. / She was a crow.” Together they are two, “changing, / changing / walking toward each other / all of their lives.” Children will have no trouble accepting the boy as a shell or the girl as a queen, island, or outer space, but adults may appreciate the author’s afterword that suggests, “changing, changing is a valentine, a bow to friendship, a wedding proposal, a fortune, a dance” or “a simple celebration of world, love, and the imagination.” (afterword) (Picture book. 3-adult)