LET THERE BE LIGHT

Abstract washes of light give way to equally lambent peaceable-kingdom scenes to illustrate Tutu’s rhapsodic retelling of the Bible creation story.

Drawn from his Children of God Storybook Bible (2010), the author’s simply phrased text highlights God’s love—which “bubbled over when there was nothing else”—as the motivating force behind each day’s acts of creation. The indistinct shape of a robed, standing figure can be discerned within the initial burst of radiance and also in later illustrations amid clouds and waves, at the heart of a flower and in the subtly modulated colors of various skies. Along with showers of sparkles in some scenes, Tillman recycles a visual element from her own The Crown on Your Head (2011) by clapping shiny crowns atop the heads of a racially diverse group of smiling children in the final illustrations. Further piling on the sentimentality, she transforms the magnificent, exactly detailed elephants, lions and other animals that pose grandly in earlier pictures to toylike figures at the children’s feet. “Isn’t it wonderful!” concludes God, clapping his hands. Yes, but here the wonder comes with a generous coating of goo. (Religion/picture book. 6-8)