Have you noticed? This is a powerhouse year for the Caldecott. We are seeing so many spectacular books worthy of Caldecott recognition — and many are illustrated by women. Jillian Tamaki's They Say Blue is one of those extraordinary picture books.

Although we know Tamaki's work from of the Caldecott Honor-winning graphic novel This One Summer, They Say Blue is her first picture book for young children. And it is indeed spectacular. It's such a visually striking and gloriously colored book, so full of movement, depth of emotion, and just plain breathtaking beauty. It's about the concept of color, but it's also about the nature of childhood in the way it A) really gets and B) so profoundly expresses how a child experiences the world. The book is specific to this one child's perceptions and experiences but universal in that those perceptions and experiences can be applied to everychild.

The words in this picture book are important, because as the pictures show the girl interacting with her world, the text allows readers to get inside the protagonist's head. And that's important because the child is examining the world by turning over objects and ideas in her hands (water, an egg) and in her head. But the text, though strong, is usually secondary to the illustrations here. This is virtuoso visual storytelling — and remember that one of the Caldecott definitions says that "a picture book for children is one that essentially provides the child with a visual experience." You don't need to read the text on the spread where the first rains of winter arrive and we see the girl trudging down a road, all hunched over, her hoodie pulled up over her head and her backpack dragging behind her. Her body language says it all. You don't need to read the text on the spread where, winter now over, "it's warm at last," and the girl sheds her many layers of winter clothes and in a stunning sequence dances toward the next spread, ready for the joys of spring and summer. You can feel her relief and delight and need. Heck, you can even feel the sun on her face.

Tamaki's exploration of the concept of color unifies the book, of course, but it's also unified by the girl herself. We know this child so well by the end of the book -- her curiousness about the world around her; how present she is in her surroundings; her active and strong imagination; her changing moods.

Tamaki's sequences here are some of the most notable elements in the book — no surprise given her expertise as a comics artist. The girl is frequently shown multiple times across a spread. Perhaps the most striking sequence is the one that happens over two double-page spreads in which the girl casts off her winter clothes and then, stretching upward toward the sun, becomes a tree. I love the childlike quality of the whole thing: her body language, her haste and eagerness, and the idea of stretching up to the sky so intensely that you turn into a tree. I also love how Tamaki has prepared viewers for that tour de force sequence by seeding earlier examples. We've earlier in the book seen the girl swimming through the water, wondering if blue whales are actually blue; and in an earlier spread, we see the girl checking to see if water is blue (it's not; when she cups water in her hands, "it's clear as glass") and tossing it up in the air "to make diamonds." The fingers of water that are tossed up into the air will be echoed in the girl's fingers that turn into branches on that later amazing tree-sequence spread.

The trajectory of the book is nontraditional -- there's no actual plot to speak of beyond the girl's exploration of the world -- but there is a trajectory. Several, in fact. There is discernible progression; definite arcs and through-lines to follow. For one thing, the palette of the art (acrylic paint on watercolor paper + Photoshop) flows from cool (blue) to warm (yellows and reds and oranges) back to cool (gray and blue and purple) and again to warm, depending on the season or scene or mood portrayed. Another super important arc is that the child moves through the world (and the book) as an independent agent — experiencing so many external stimuli; doing so much internal processing. She's moving forward all the time, on her own, and so it's such a palpable comfort and sense of rightness-with-the-world that in the end she's at rest and at home, and being so lovingly cared for by her mother. As a reader of this book I can feel the mother's hand on my own forehead; feel the love in the braiding of the girl's hair. "Black is the color of my hair. My mother parts it every morning, like opening a window." The play of colors here is extraordinary, as the dark blues and black on the left side of the spread give way to the bright yellow of the day on the right side of the spread. The art is stunning (yes, I've used that word a lot!); but I'm left with the more intimate sense of the relationship between mother and daughter, as the mother braids the girl's hair and the pair look out the window together at the sunrise. We end the book with a sense of comfort and renewal, with the girl's spirit being fed so that she can venture out into the world once again.

They Say Blue is not an especially large book (its trim size is approx. 10" x 10"), but it feels large and expansive because of the full-bleed spreads and the saturation of the color. And yet, to me it also feels small because of the intimacy of the portrait of the narrator/protagonist. Even though we see a lot of the world in the book, and the views are expansive — sea, sky, fields of waving golden grass — we are always and firmly inside the thoughts of the narrator, and, however expansive, we experience the world through her. So it's a quiet and internal and intimate book, too; it's an immersion into a world and a child's persona. And please keep in mind that the presence of a "plot" is not a Caldecott criterion. The Caldecott definition says only that "a picture book has a collective unity of story-line, theme, or concept, developed through the series of pictures of which the book is comprised." In They Say Blue the theme and concept have been developed superbly, and with a child's sensibilities always in mind.

So much more to say, but these are some of my thoughts on They Say Blue. Now, what say you?

[You can read the Horn Book Magazine review of They Say Blue here.]