In Every Life

by Marla Frazee

Overview

This Caldecott Honor picture book is a simple and profound meditation on the many wonders of life from three-time Caldecott Honor recipient Marla Frazee.

In every life, there is love and loss, hope and joy, wonder and mystery. With glowing art and spare, powerful text, Caldecott Honor–winning creator Marla Frazee celebrates the moments, feelings, and experiences, both big and small, that make up a life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781665955775
Publisher:	Beach Lane Books
Publication date:	11/24/2023
Edition description:	Signed Edition
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	97,230
Product dimensions:	11.10(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.30(d)
Age Range:	3 Months to 8 Years

About the Author

Marla Frazee is the recipient of a Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for Picture Book and a three-time Caldecott Honor winner. She has illustrated many acclaimed picture books, including All the World by Liz Garton Scanlon, Stars by Mary Lyn Ray, and Everywhere Babies by Susan Meyers, as well as her own Farmer Books trilogy, A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever, and The Boss Baby, which inspired the DreamWorks Animation film. She is also the illustrator of the New York Times bestselling Clementine chapter books by Sara Pennypacker. The mother of three grown sons, she lives in Pasadena, California. Visit her at MarlaFrazee.com.

Marla Frazee is the recipient of a Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for Picture Book and a three-time Caldecott Honor winner. She has illustrated many acclaimed picture books, including All the World by Liz Garton Scanlon, Stars by Mary Lyn Ray, and Everywhere Babies by Susan Meyers, as well as her own Farmer Books trilogy, A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever, and The Boss Baby, which inspired the DreamWorks Animation film. She is also the illustrator of the New York Times bestselling Clementine chapter books by Sara Pennypacker. The mother of three grown sons, she lives in Pasadena, California. Visit her at MarlaFrazee.com.

Editorial Reviews

★ 12/19/2022

This brief, stirring benediction—based on a “call-and-response version of a Jewish baby-naming blessing,” Frazee (The Great Zapfino) notes on the book’s dedication page—starts with new life. “In every birth,/ blessed is the wonder” reads hand-lettered text, shown above delicately drawn vignettes of variously aged caregivers cuddling, nursing, and admiring infants and toddlers. “In every smile,/ blessed is the light” captures moments of pleasure as people read, talk, snuggle, and tussle. Across the pages’ silvery vignettes, intersectionally inclusive groups and individuals experience anticipation (“In every hope/ blessed is the doing”) and loss (“In every sadness,/ blessed is the comfort”), and embrace each other in vulnerability (“In every love,/ blessed are the tears”). Throughout, the blessings and attendant spot art alternate with wide, wordless landscapes: a changing sky covered in puffy pink clouds, a winding path through sparsely wooded hills, a lighted window on a rainy night. A rich trove of moving images lets Frazee range over an expansive constellation of human experiences, offering fodder to explore and discuss. Ages up to 8. Agent: Steven Malk, Writers House. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"Two-time Caldecott Honor recipient Marla Frazee brings her considerable talents to a timeless celebration of birth and life in In Every Life, a wonder of a picture book.... Frazee’s love both for her art and for life itself shines from each page of In Every Life. This gentle, luminous book is a treasure."

2/1/2023 - BookPage

"Readers looking for picture books featuring people who look like them: rejoice!... Fellowship is precisely the feeling that [Frazee] captures here, in uplifting word and luminous image."

2/10/2023 - Shelf Awareness For Readers

* "This book is a meditation on gratitude, full of intricate symbolism.... The overall mood is slow, steady, and soothing. The combination of the spiritual words and the prosaic moments alternating with grand panoramas bestows a magnitude to the minutiae of the everyday. The characters are diverse in every sense of the word, representing a myriad of families and lived experiences. While the book’s brevity is appropriate for a read-aloud, children will want to examine the illustrations closely.... Simultaneously simple and majestic, this benediction of a book is recommended for first purchase."

1/1/2023 - School Libary Journal

★ 01/01/2023

PreS-Gr 1—This book is a meditation on gratitude, full of intricate symbolism. Frazee explains in a note that she was inspired by a "call-and-response version of a Jewish baby-naming blessing" she heard at a Christian church decades ago. The text is made up of seven lines, all but the last composed of seven words each. Seven is a significant number in Judaism, and structuring the text in this way is a subtle acknowledgement of that faith tradition. Each of the seven lines is presented on a spread with a series of small illustrations, vignettes that represent each idea. Following each is a wordless spread featuring a sprawling landscape peopled by small figures. Each line has a thematic color, and the palettes of the wordless spreads combine the colors to link the concepts. The pages of the first line, "In every birth, blessed is the wonder," are suffused with a soft pink. The following spread shows a family gazing at the sky, a baby pointing to the fluffy pink clouds that slowly bleed into yellow, the color of the second line: "In every smile, blessed is the light." The overall mood is slow, steady, and soothing. The combination of the spiritual words and the prosaic moments alternating with grand panoramas bestows a magnitude to the minutiae of the everyday. The characters are diverse in every sense of the word, representing a myriad of families and lived experiences. While the book's brevity is appropriate for a read-aloud, children will want to examine the illustrations closely. VERDICT Simultaneously simple and majestic, this benediction of a book is recommended for first purchase.—Elizabeth Lovsin

School Library Journal

★ 2022-10-26
“And in every life, / blessed is the love.”

Frazee’s author’s note explains that she was inspired to write this text when she “heard a call-and-response version of a Jewish baby-naming blessing and immediately felt its potential as a picture book.” After several false starts, she began working on it in 2020, “when so many things about our world were upended,” and the following year, her first grandchild was born. In its inclusive, warmhearted celebration of community, family, and life itself, the resulting book feels like a melding of earlier titles Frazee illustrated: Everywhere Babies (2001) by Susan Meyers and All the World (2009) by Liz Garton Scanlon. While the realistic art style is akin to that of those books, the text is sparer, with pacing grounded in the call-and-response inspiration: “In every birth,” reads the opening verso, with the resolution on the facing page reading, “blessed is the wonder.” Accompanying vignettes of babies cared for by young and old people alike invite readers to speculate about relationships and to delight in the loving, diverse depictions. Then the page turn reveals a full-bleed vista of a couple with a baby looking at the sunrise, pink clouds filling the sky. Once established, this pattern—of a call-and-response spread illustrated with vignettes followed by a wordless full-bleed spread of a single family in nature—carries through the entire book, providing opportunities for observation, conversation, and reflection. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

This lyrical blessing of a picture book belongs on every shelf. (Picture book. 3-6)

Kirkus Reviews