Simplicity made plain and lovely carries a nondenominational prayer of gratitude for all that is.
Jago’s images, “rendered in digital paints and photographic textures,” are striking and occasionally startling: Layers of color combine with multiple swirling lines, waves and textures to create very clear images of adults, children, animals and the natural world. The words are not flashy, eschewing sentimentality and didacticism. A child’s voice expresses thanks for family, for home, for food, for “new words I learned today, / … / for songs sung, / and for love whispered.” There is gratitude for the whole world, as well as its plants and animals, rain and sky, night and light. The human figures may represent one family or all families, as they gather around a table or at the seashore, with differing skin tones and hair textures and a variety of ages, from babies in arms to elders using canes.
God is not defined or delimited in any way, so that any believer might find a way to prayer in these words.
(Picture book. 4-7)