I Am Life

Gr 1–3—This Norwegian import, companion title to the creators' first collaboration, Life and I: a Story About Death, is even more beautiful and immediately relatable. Inside, readers find Death's counterpart, Life, represented as an attentive, playful, orange bird child. He can grow to embrace an entire forest and on the next page shrink to fly "alongside insects that live for no longer than a single hour." He places his "hand on every mother's growing tummy" and whenever he appears with his tiny heart-shaped smile, he is fully present, a rare find in our busy world. Hedger's translation sings with alliteration and never feels clumsy. Even short phrases can be pulled out for closer examination in class. Schneider lays on thick rich watercolor for soil, fur, and bark and then ever-so-lightly uses colored pencils to draw in the wings of a butterfly or colors of coral, angel fish, sea horses, and mollusks, or the mushrooms growing from the rings on a tree stump.