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The Blue Forest is a collection of seven highly imaginative bedtime stories
one story for each night of the week, and each story featuring one of seven colors.
The stories, set in a magical blue forest, tell of mysterious nighttime
events and relationships involving humans and animals and nature.
In the first story, a small girl, wearing a dress as white as the stars and
embroidered with fine golden thread, walks a path through the forest
of blue trees. While making her way through the silent woods,
she discovers a casket of jewels from which she selects a silver ring.
As she places it on her finger it twinkles in unison with a star,
which just at that moment peers through the foliage of a nearby tree.
In the last story an old woman tends a garden where the flowers unfold
at nightfall to greet the stars. While the old woman sings and plants
blue seedlings, a pink butterfly alights on her head. When she turns
back to the garden path to her house, the pink butterfly flutters
off into the dark woods, arriving at a simple hut where a girl in
a white dress with golden embroidery sleeps. The seventh story
thus joins the tales into a circle.
Other characters in The Blue Forest include: a red bird whose
mellifluous song inspires dreams, a boy who is led by a blue bird to
a murky pond where an enormous golden flower blossoms before
his eyes, an astrologer who paints stars from his purple tower,
a fish family that transports raindrop-jewels to a secret subterranean
sea cave, a mother and baby possum who chance on a mysterious
emerald-green sanctuary while seeking refuge from a sudden storm.
The tales of The Blue Forest have an innovative and artistic character
that explores the genre of bedtime stories in a new way. They were
conceived and composed as bedtime stories in the most emphatic sense:
their vivid painterly depictions, enigmatic occurrences, and archetypal
imagery make the tales resemble the non-discursive and ethereal
dreamscape of sleep. The stories enliven the imagination in a way
that leads the reader and listener seamlessly from the clear outlines
of the waking world into the elusive realm of dreams.
The luminous illustrations by Stephanie Young and Tim Smith beautifully serve the soothing and magical qualities of the stories.
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