ALL ABOUT PATTERNS

Meditative observations on patterns in art, in nature, and in life.

Continuing their efforts to nudge readers toward greater mindfulness, Rusch and Goss follow up All About Nothing (2023) and All About Color (2024) by pointing to the ubiquity of patterns. “What do you know about patterns?” the author asks. She defines the concept as anything that repeats, while Goss depicts a set of inward-looking children diverse in race and age—some lining up seeds and other small items, others painting images of rows and spirals, examining pine cones, dancing, playing a guitar, or sharing books (the collaborators’ previous ones) with parents. When changes such as the birth of a newborn sibling break comfortable patterns, “everything feels chaotic,” but only, reassuringly, until a new pattern can be worked out. Some of the gnomic claims (“Stories can have patterns”) beg for interpretation or discussion, and even with additional context, many children will have trouble with the author’s mini-discourse on tessellations in the backmatter. Still, more reflective young audiences will still get at least the general drift, and as a takeaway, the closing insight that our brains “love finding patterns” is as universally true as it is easy to comprehend. Some domestic scenes feature a multiracial family with two little ones.

A sketchy introduction to an important, if abstract, idea.