We Are All Made of Stars

My cousin posted this Carl Sagan quotation on facebook yesterday:
 

“The
nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood,
the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing
stars. We are made of starstuff.”

I loved it, although I have been singing Moby ever since, and so has my uncle, apparently.

And then, today, this, in my review pile, jumped out at me. Serendipity?

You Are Stardust
by Elin Kelsey
OwlKids
ISBN: 978 1 92697 335 7

I was hoping right away to love this, as I love the idea behind it, that we are, as Carl Sagan put it above, made of starstuff. Isn’t that wonderful? And being connected to all things and all times, it’s just a lovely, poetic way of thinking about how everything is one, and how there is beauty in even the physics we learned in high school about Conservation of Mass.

I was not in the least disappointed. The illustrations in this are lovely and strange, three-dimensional dioramas of rough delicacy, with gorgeous watercolour pieces strung together with fine threads and sturdy twine. There is a magical feel to it that matches perfectly with the lyricism of the text, which talks about how we and everything around us are made of the same stuff, and of how the water we drink has been drunk for millenia. The book, the idea, is lovely and fascinating, and very, very worth sharing.

I’ll leave you with this lovely underwater interior spread about salt water in the womb, in your veins, in your sweat, and in your tears. Is this shark not simply beautiful?