BLUEBERRY GIRL

A rich and beautiful prayer for a girl. “Ladies of light and ladies of darkness and ladies of never-you-mind, / This is a prayer for a blueberry girl.” Three women in flowing robes—the appropriately mythological Maiden, Mother and Crone—float in the sky over a small, dancing child trailed by numerous birds of the air. Free her from “nightmares at three or bad husbands at thirty,” let her run and dance and grow, teach her and help her find her own truth. The verse is lovely, sinuous and sweetly rhyming, piling on blessings. Vess’s precise line-and-color illustrations fill each spread with velvet colors and the iconography of myths and fairy tales, a good match to fantasist Gaiman’s words. Plants, animals, sun and meadow appear in elegantly drawn detail, their realism tempered by floating trees and magical flowers. The girl transforms from stanza to stanza and spread to spread, blond or burnished, child or nearly teen. There is nothing cute or cloying here, just beauty, balance and joy. (Picture book. 4-8)