Robert Furrow

You know that feeling when you get excited that a book you love might be a Caldecott contender, only to realize the illustrator does not meet the Caldecott’s U.S. citizenship or residency requirement? Dang it! Your beloved book is ineligible for the Caldecott. Sometimes it's something else. Sometimes a book pushes the boundaries of what might be considered a standard picture book.

Despite their static appearance, stones move, change, and tell stories, debut author Barnard Booth details in a picture book that considers its subject in narrative terms. Considering a rock picked up by a brown-skinned child at water’s edge, lines describe it as “not/ just a stone” but an entity that has experienced history on a geological and historical scale.