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Gerald McDermott; illus. by Gerald McDermott. Creation.
Dutton, 2003 32p
ISBN 0-525-46905-2 $16.99
5-10 yrs
Recreating creation has been a particularly fruitful literary enterprise of
late. Phyllis Root and Helen Oxenbury envisioned in Big Momma Makes the World
(BCCB 2/03) a zaftig goddess who fashions the cosmos with her pudgy baby at
her side, folksy benediction on her lips, and an indulgent but slightly stern
love for her humans in her heart. Julius Lester and Joe Cepeda injected a broad
measure of humor into the undertaking, with the god of What a Truly Cool
World (BCCB 2/99) putting the finishing touches on his work while a host
of opinionated minions put their two cents in. Now McDermott rides the pendulum
back from playful imagination to the sacred mythology that shaped the image
of creation in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. God is once again a potent,
incorporeal force, and the genesis of life an impalpable mystery.
The creative trajectory of Genesis is honored here, but the narrator is the
Creator himself, and he makes his pride and power manifest: “I was before
time. I was everywhere. There was nothing. I was there. My spirit moved over
the deep. I floated in the darkness.” What better than a disembodied voice
to evoke the wonder of bringing being into being by breath alone? When he says,
“Then I breathed light into the dark. The light became day. The darkness
became night,” there’s no need to point out that “it was good.”
What else could it be? There’s also no need to define the order of human
emergence—no purloined ribs, no hint of woman as an afterthought: “Out
of myself I brought man and woman. I gave my gifts to them.” Of course,
there’s a paradox to this unnamed Eden: all creation may be a gift, but
it’s also a mission, and humans are designated stewards with a heavy onus
of responsibility: “Creatures that swim. Creatures that crawl. Creatures
that fly . . . with woman and man to care for them.” Abrogation
of responsibility and the thumping fall from grace are, happily, still in the
future, and McDermott leaves his burgeoning world rife with innocent possibility.
An audience familiar with McDermott’s An Arrow to the Sun (BCCB
11/74) or Raven (6/93) will recognize his skillful signature deployment
of obsidian black. Darkness here, however, is more than effective artistic contrast
or a device to catch and direct the eye. Black is a fundamental element in a
nascent universe, and McDermott spreads broad spaces of slick emptiness against
which a hazy gray swirl of “spirit” can bloom in the next double bleed
into a field of nearly incandescent white as “the light became day.”
Black isn’t banished with the appearance of light; it forms the boundaries
between “sweet and salt” waters above and below heaven. It’s
the void that swooping birds and leaping fish and stampeding land animals race
to fill at every turn of the page. Against the black, colors intensify as the
cosmos grows, from the muddy brown and steely grays of the primal mists to the
riot of jewel-toned entities—amethyst birds, emerald seas, topaz stars,
sapphire humans, all mottled and stippled in dense brushwork that fairly crackles
with life.
The closing spread returns to serene blackness, but now a fiery red spark encasing
an embryonic shape floats above the text: “I am all this. All this I AM.”
This, of course, explains nothing. Or perhaps it explains everything. Could
be a profound theological insight. Could be a teasing, artistic conceit. But
then, hasn’t this always been the ultimate mystery story? (Imprint information
appears on p. 115.)
Elizabeth Bush, Reviewer
Cover illustration by Gerald McDermott from Creation
©2003. Used by permission of Dutton Children’s Books.
This page was last updated on November 1, 2003.