There Was a Shadow: A Picture Book

Ages 5 to 7, Grades K to 2

From New York Times Best Children’s Book author Bruce Handy, a luminous picture book that invites careful observation of light and shadow in the natural world, as well as in our own emotional landscape. As the sun makes its daily journey across the sky, light comes down to illuminate our world. Moving and dancing along with this light come a variety of shadows—those cast by the sun and those cast by our feelings, minds, and memories. Here we follow a girl from dawn through dusk into night as she and her friends play with their shadows, take refuge in the shade of a large tree, and set out again for home in the violet glow of twilight. With a lyrical text from Bruce Handy and dramatic, sensitive art from award-winning illustrator Lisk Feng, There Was a Shadow invites readers to look up and down, in and out––to notice the position of the sun and the corresponding length or shortness of shadows, as well as the subtle ways in which light and shadow reveal and obscure things both in the world and in ourselves. With images that swell and overflow with light, this is a picture book that is sure to awe and delight.

About the Author

Bruce Handy is an author, journalist, essayist, critic, humorist, and editor. His first book for young readers, The Happiness of a Dog with a Ball in Its Mouth, was named a Best Children’s Book of 2021 by the New York Times. Handy is also the author of Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children’s Literature as an Adult (Simon & Schuster). He has also worked as a writer-editor at Vanity Fair, Time, Esquire, and Spy and has contributed to the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, New York, and the New Yorker, as well as other publications that don’t have New York in their titles, including The Atlantic and the Wall Street Journal. He currently lives in New York with his wife, the novelist Helen Schulman.

Lisk Feng is an award-winning illustrator. She has worked with clients such as the New York Times, the New Yorker, and Apple, and has illustrated several children’s books, including Everest, A Hug Is for Holding Me, and Our World. In addition to receiving recognitions from the Society of Illustrators and Communication Arts, she was selected for the 2019 Forbes “30 under 30” list for Art and Style. Originally from China, she now lives in New York City.