 Hi everybody, I have a wonderful, beautifully illustrated book to share with you today called The Stuff of Stars by Marion Dane Bauer and illustrated by Akua Holmes, in the dark, in the dark, in the deep, deep dark, a speck floated, invisible as thought, weighty as God, there was yet no time, there was yet no space, no up, no down, no edge, no center, no earth with soaring hawks, scuttling beetles, trees reaching for the sky, there was no sky, no you, no me, only the speck, weighty and weighty, and then the beginning of the beginning of all beginnings went bang! and in a trillionth of a second, our universe was born, a cloud of gas unfolded, unfurled, zigged and zagged, stretched and collided, expanded, expanded, expanded, bits bumped, gathered, fused, and throughout the cosmos stars caught fire, trillions of stars, but still no planets to attend those stars, and if no planets, then no oceans, no mountains, no hippopotamide, no violets blooming in a shady wood, no crickets singing in the night, no day, no night, the stars burned and burned, they burned so long and so hot, that some of them exploded, flinging star dust everywhere, and the ash of those dying stars gathered into planets, and the planets circled other stars, but still no blueberries, no butterflies, still no snails, no giraffes, still no you and no me, the planets closest to their star stayed very hot, the ones far away were very cold, one of those beautiful planets, but one lucky planet, a fragile blue ball that we call earth, was neither too far nor too near, it circled its yellow star, the one we call sun, from just the right distance and with just the right tilt to be sometimes warm, sometimes cold, perfect, returning that starry stuff into mitochondria, jellyfish, spiders, into ferns and sharks, into daisies and galloping horses, again and again star dust gave birth to star dust, dinosaurs lived and died, making room for humans, our great great great grandparents and all before them, lived and died, making room for more and more children, then one day, in the dark, in the dark, in the deep deep dark, another spec floated, invisible as dreams and special as love, waiting, waiting, dividing, changing, growing, until at last you burst into the world, you took a big breath of the same air that was once breathed by woolly mammoths, you cried tears that were once salty seas, you're here once the carbon and a leaf, you and the velvet moss, the caterpillars, the lions, you and the singing whales, the larks, the frogs, you and me loving you, all of us, the stuff of stars. The end. Thank you for joining me for that book.