A Gift of Dust
How Saharan Plumes Feed the Planet
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected 27 May 2025
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- €10.99
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- Pre-Order
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- €10.99
Publisher Description
From two award-winning creators comes a picture book that reveals the hidden wonders of how Saharan Dust impacts the world: from slowing a hurricane to nourishing a rainforest.
This dust . . .
of what lived once
sustains what lives today
and what will be born . . .
tomorrow.
An ancient catfish becomes a fossil, and as the lake where it lived dries up, the fossil turns to dust--but this isn't ordinary dust. This dust begins in Chad, West Africa, but winds carry it across the continent, over the Atlantic ocean, to nourish and replenish the Amazon rain forest and beyond.
A Gift of Dust takes readers on a journey that shows just how interconnected our planet is, and how something so small can have such a huge impact. With lyrical, awe-inspiring verse based in fact, and stunning art from a Caldecott honoree, this is a story for our times.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Brockenbrough writes in incantatory lines about great clouds of dust from the Sahara whose westward motion delivers unexpected benefits. Dust is not just one thing, the text explains; particles comprise "dirt, pollen, or a bit of a living thing." In an old seabed, for example, fish might die, fossilize, and eventually become airborne. Carried across the Atlantic, the motes scatter nutrients, then land in the Amazon rainforest, where they replenish phosphorus washed away by torrential rainfall. Dotted with playful notes ("enough rain falls/ to submerge... a stack of twenty capybaras"), the lines underscore themes of atmospheric connection: "dust.../ that binds us through time/ and space." Via impressionistic images, Martinez-Neal represents dust as small, sand-like particles that drift and dance, casting golden mist across the spreads. Human characters are portrayed with brown skin. Ages 4–8.
