I’ve been a student of awe since I was child, but felt the need to formally study the topic during my MFA program. For one class, I wrote a seminar paper on the sublime: a mix of beauty, grandeur, and awe coupled with our own sense of smallness and fear, but fear experienced through enough distance to allow room for delight, pleasure, and wonder.
I worked to incorporate the sublime (without naming it) into the narrative of my new picture book, THE OCEAN’S HEART. But now there’s a picture book that approaches the topic head on:
First let’s inspect this cover. Fireworks! The night sky! A comet! The desert! A city skyline! A whale breaching! A rainbow! A flower-filled field and a kaleidoscope of butterflies! A collage of awe-inspiring elements. And yes, awe comes with lots of exclamation points (my own).
Plus, there’s a group of children, one with their arms wide, reaching toward the sky as if to embrace the entire world and its wonders. I am intrigued and already feeling like that expressive child.
So I am eager to turn the page. Surprise! The story leaps into action.
I am already gobsmacked, and it’s only the title page! Awash in AWE! Those colors! (I had to investigate the media used: Susan Gal created them with pencil, ink, and watercolor and then assembled them digitally.) The looseness of the lines. There’s so much movement in these first three spreads. What a stunning opening!
But back to the narrative. What do we mean by “awe”? Like “Awww? Look at these adorable kittens? So cute!”
“Not exactly…”
The rhyming narrative describes how our senses offer telltale clues that we’re actually feeling awe. The chills. The tears. The need to vocalize in excitement. Or the need for silence.
Page after page, readers experience awe brought on by the small, the vast, the spectacular, the delightful, and yes, the fearsome.
And I think that awe also comes from seeing our true place in the universe, if only for a nanosecond. As if we are witnessing the divine, whatever that means to the individual. It can take our breath away. Like the spread of the Northern Lights! Oh. My. I’m not going to show it to you. You must find the book!
It is awe that often draws us to our passion, whether its biology or engineering or poetry or…. Awe that we feel when we create something or observe something that we never dreamed was possible. When the mystical or spiritual touches our lives. Awe lifts us up and enlarges our world. It changes us.
When I studied poetry, I learned about Federico Garcia Lorca, his idea of duende, and how it is a kind of power that sleeps inside of the artist, waiting for them to engage with their authentic self, their soul. People who enjoy watching dance or concert performances may have witnessed an extraordinary moment when they realized the performer had summoned duende (or the divine). They and the audience were transported to another plain.
But where does that leave the nonartist?
Awe can awaken the soul in anyone. And when it happens as a group, it binds the group together. Think of the number of people who came together to witness “A Few Beautiful Minutes” of the 2024 solar eclipse, as Kate Allen Fox writes in her picture book about the event. There is awe in a shared, transformative experience.
And as shown in this book, there is also awe in love and caring for one another. Awe in the palpable sense of community. Meaning you don’t have to go far to find it, especially if you open your eyes and your heart to the possibility wherever you may be.
This book will serve as marvelous inspiration for some terrific discussions about how awe lifts us up, nurtures our hearts, and gives us hope. Highly recommended!
Activities:
Check out Chana Stiefel’s excellent parent and educator activities that go with this book.
Listen to music that fills you with awe, and paint a picture while listening. Does the painting feel like it was inspired by the music?
Write a poem while listening to the same music. Does the poem feel inspired by the music, too? Do the poem and painting echo each other in any ways?
Title: Awe!
Author: Chana Stiefel
Illustrator: Susan Gal
Publisher: Scholastic Press, 2026
Themes: awe, wonder, social and emotional learning
Ages: Pre-k through elementary school
For more perfect picture book recommendations, please visit Susanna Hill’s website.
Your review of AWE!, and discussion of the sublime is sublime! thank you, Chana, Susan, and JIlanne!
Thank you, Mona! I hope this gorgeous book sparks some lively discussions!
What a beauty! Thanks for sharing and putting it on my radar!
It is truly gorgeous. The illustrations and text work so well together.
In one of the spreads, awe is small, which will make this concept readily available to kids who probably don’t yet have those big awe-inspiring experiences. There’s awe in listening to a robin singing its evening song, awe in watching frogs jump into a pond, or bats swoop at night. Those small experiences always reconnect me to nature and our place in it. I’m trying to capture that small awe in my writing. This picture book will be wonderful to share with my granddaughter in hopes she too will look for awe outdoors.
Yes, one of the things this book does so well is capture awe in its many different forms. And I think the cover and spreads throughout do a fabulous job of showing those small things mixed in with those that happen on a larger scale. For the littles, awe often comes in the form of delight. When my son was small, he’d sit on a boulder in a stream and not say a word. I’d ask him what he was doing, and he’d say “I’m listening,” then smile. To this day, he loves sitting in nature and being silent. All the better if he can be looking out over a lake or some other vista.
What a clever idea for a book!
Yes! And so well done!
This is a fantastic post and as I mentioned to you in an email earlier this week since I had already seen AWE! last summer when Chana shared an arc of this breathtaking book, I think your book THE OCEAN’S HEART and AWE! make a perfect pairing.
Thank you, Laura! ❤️ It would be fun to talk about our books together. Stay tuned!
Can’t wait to see the Northern Lights spread! Thanks for sharing, Jilanne!
It shimmers on the page!
Thanks for a peek at this book! It’s on my TBR list. The art looks amazing.
I think you’re going to enjoy it! 🎆
I remember when Chana shared this manuscript in our critique group. It’s wonderful to see it published and illustrated by such a fantastic artist.
Yes, it’s fantastic to see friends’ manuscripts transform into books and make their way into the world, isn’t it? Like watching a friend’s child grow up, and being as proud of them as you are of your own. ❤️
An AWEsome, aweFULL review Jilanne! And onto the TBR pile it goes 🙂
Thank you! And yay!!! It’s so much fun to add books to the TBR pile!
Great review, Jilanne. I love your activity of writing a poem while listening to favorite music. It was fascinating (and AWE inspiring) to also have the chance to see the original premise and draft and then the stunning book it became. So glad you shared it.
Thank you, Maria! Making a picture book can be like alchemy, don’t you think? Somewhere in the process it can transform!
Thank you for writing this outstanding review. I am so in AWE of you! Much appreciated. xo Chana
❤️ Thank YOU and Susan for making this AWE-inspiring book!