Infinity and Me

September 24, 2012
Dark-haired Uma sits wide-eyed in her backyard under a black, star-studded sky, torn between the charm of her new red shoes and the overwhelming size of the universe. “How many stars were in the sky? A million? A billion? Maybe the number was as big as infinity.” Friends, teachers, and family give Uma new ways to think about infinity—as an endless succession of ancestors, or as a noodle cut in half and in half again (Swiatkowska draws Uma cutting a python-sized noodle with a knife, demonstrating that things can become infinitely small, too). She struggles with the sheer enormity of the idea: “Actually, my head was starting to hurt from all these thoughts.” It’s not until Uma’s grandmother notices her shoes that Uma can make infinity her own: “y love for her was as big as infinity.” Hosford’s (Big Bouffant) story is as much a look into the interior life of a sensitive girl as it is a meditation on a mathematical concept—a task for which Swiatkowska’s (This Baby) idiosyncratic portraits are perfectly suited. Ages 5–10. Agent: Tracey Adams, Adams Literary. Illustrator’s agent: Emily Van Beek, Folio Literary Management.