NOTHING AT ALL!

Today, Clara is lying on the grass like a “lazy lizard dreaming.”

It’s a beautiful day for counting clouds. For listening to the trees. For feeling the soft grass and watching ants. Clara’s daddy is worried. Is Clara sulking? Wouldn’t Clara like to go to the pool with friends? Go for a bike ride? Come bake some muffins? Clara thinks poor Daddy doesn’t understand. He would like Clara to be busy from morning till night, like her friend Rémi, who is always in one lesson or another. But Clara is enjoying thinking about anything, or thinking about nothing, or dreaming about nothing. It is beautiful and peaceful. Perhaps when Daddy finishes with the muffins, they will sit together, “doing nothing.” Clara’s contented smile while floating in and out of a dreamlike state on a grassy hill is inviting and convincing. Small creatures populate the scenes, a few at a time, sometimes mirroring Clara’s expressions, creating a sense of harmony between Clara and the natural world. Clara is brown-skinned, with a curly Afro; Daddy is never pictured. The rest of the characters, depicted in the imagined scenes, are White, and this lack of diversity has a slightly unsettling visual effect. Still, Clara’s intentional slowness is refreshing and makes for a wonderfully paced story. The story was originally published in French in Québec in 2016 as Rien du tout!

A welcome celebration of calm in a busy, distracted world.