Description

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From New York Times Best Children’s Book author Bruce Handy, a luminous picture book that invites careful observation of light and shadow in the natural world, as well as in our own emotional landscape.

A Publishers Weekly 2024 Summer Read!

As the sun makes its daily journey across the sky, light comes down to illuminate our world. Moving and dancing along with this light come a variety of shadows—those cast by the sun and those cast by our feelings, minds, and memories. Here we follow a girl from dawn through dusk into night as she and her friends play with their shadows, take refuge in the shade of a large tree, and set out again for home in the violet glow of twilight.

With a lyrical text from Bruce Handy and dramatic, sensitive art from award-winning illustrator Lisk Feng, There Was a Shadow invites readers to look up and down, in and out––to notice the position of the sun and the corresponding length or shortness of shadows, as well as the subtle ways in which light and shadow reveal and obscure things both in the world and in ourselves.

With images that swell and overflow with light, this is a picture book that is sure to awe and delight.

About the Author

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Bruce Handy is an author, journalist, essayist, critic, humorist, and editor. His first book for young readers, The Happiness of a Dog with a Ball in Its Mouth, was named a Best Children’s Book of 2021 by the New York Times. Handy is also the author of Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children’s Literature as an Adult (Simon & Schuster). He has also worked as a writer-editor at Vanity Fair, Time, Esquire, and Spy and has contributed to the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, New York, and the New Yorker, as well as other publications that don’t have New York in their titles, including The Atlantic and the Wall Street Journal. He currently lives in New York with his wife, the novelist Helen Schulman.


Lisk Feng is an award-winning illustrator. She has worked with clients such as the New York Times, the New Yorker, and Apple, and has illustrated several children’s books, including Everest, A Hug Is for Holding Me, and Our World. In addition to receiving recognitions from the Society of Illustrators and Communication Arts, she was selected for the 2019 Forbes “30 under 30” list for Art and Style. Originally from China, she now lives in New York City.

Praise For…

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A Publishers Weekly 2024 Summer Read

STARRED REVIEW! ★ “Lulling, mesmerizing lines by Handy observe shadows as they grow and fade, reflecting life over the course of a day... A reiterative narrative voice invites readers to pay attention... Short sentences, progressing stepwise, reveal fresh surprises... Atmospheric spreads by Lisk pay attention to the play of light and its source—sunlight casts warm shadows, the indistinct shadows of dusk contain mystery, and moonlit shadows enchant. Together, the creators’ shared intensity gives this carefully observed work its resonance.”

— Publishers Weekly

STARRED REVIEW! ★ “The absence of light inspires its own unique story in this scintillating, kid-centered view of shadow play... Handy picks apart this day-to-day darkness while preserving its magic and wonder. Meanwhile, Feng’s art depicts the natural existence of shadows, outdoor and in, with an evocative sense of wonder. The world on these pages is rendered realistically, its innate magic still held intact. With kids’ fears banished, these shadows are no less enigmatic for being observed so closely in this lyrical, loving ode.”
— Kirkus