IN THE PALM OF MY HAND

This picture book seems to contain everything in the world.

Everything in this story is connected to everything else. An acorn, held by a child, appears on the opening pages: “Within it grows a forest.” Following a spread of trees in a wood, we’re told, “And within that forest / towers an oak tree, tall and grand.” Scientifically minded adults may be reminded of an atom, too small to see but filled with quarks and neutrons and electrons. Later, the child catches a raindrop and starts to imagine where it came from—from “the depths of the sea” to a rain cloud to the child’s hand, and if it had landed back in the ocean, it might have kept traveling to a distant shore. Conti’s illustrations show the child watching that shore through a spyglass. Some of the items in the illustrations are a little frightening, like the rain cloud, painted in the heaviest blues and grays and blacks. But they’re beautiful, too. The fields of grass appear to contain every shade of green. Every item in the book, even a grain of sand, is as beautiful in both its simplicity and complexity. The child and other characters who appear are light-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Readers will close this book loving their small part of the world a little more.