SHADOWS: Here, There, and Everywhere

Shadows: Here, There, and Everywhere (Thomas Y. Crowell, New York, 1981) began as a very different book. I called it Shady The Runaway Shadow. It was a fictional story about a little boy's shadow who is bored with being the shadow of a little boy. He runs away to have different experiences and with each adventure the reader learns something about shadows. For example, by sitting on an egg, Shady makes the oval shape of an egg visible. Eventually the shadow misses the boy so much, he returns home just in time to save the little boy's life. The boy is about to run into the street and because he has no shadow, the approaching car isn't going to stop. Shady saves the boy by becoming his shadow once more.  By stretching himself across the street, Shady alerts the driver to the boy's presence. The driver sees the boy and screeches to a halt.
The editors didn't like it. Their words were, "No one would believe in a living shadow. Rewrite it!"  So, I did or I should say we did. This time it was totally nonfiction.  The editors were right.

I am not a writer, so my wife Nancy volunteered to write the book. "If Millicent Selsam (author of Backyard Insects) can do it, so can I". And she did. We planned the book, Nancy started writing the text, and I set about taking the photographs that we needed.

Click on the arrow at the top right of the photo to go to the next pages in the slide show of the book below.