Ada Limón is the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States, a 2023 MacArthur Fellow, and a National Book Award Finalist. Her poem "In Praise of Mystery" is engraved on NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft, which launched on October 14, 2024 to make a 1.8 billion-mile journey to Jupiter's second moon, Europa. Her poem now graces this book, which has wondrous illustrations by Caldecott Honoree Peter Sís (see also Nicky and Vera).
Limón's opening lines give a microcosm of the whole book by linking earth to the heavens, highlighting awe and imagination as human qualities that draw us to the stars:
"Arching under the night sky inky
with black expansiveness, we point
to the planets we know,
we pin quick wishes on stars."
While the poem evokes the "unerring book of the universe," its message focuses on "mysteries below our skies" — from whale song to leaf and blossom to grief and pleasure. Peter Sís captures this paradox of the immeasurable awe of Earth even amid infinite cosmic vastness. For instance, he pictures two enormous celestial orbs smiling from the corners of a page-spread at a small yet vibrantly colored, deeply rooted tree of life floating in space.
Although this book is listed for four-to-eight-year-old readers, the poem will move any heart sophisticated enough to listen (and even babies like to listen!). The illustrations, as well, hold secret bits of intrigue for older readers: labyrinths, compasses, astrological symbols, and even Sís' take on Van Gogh's famous "Starry Night" painting.
We humans of all ages have "a need to call out through the dark," as Limón puts it. Who knows whether Europa Clipper will encounter other beings with similar needs in its travels? If it does, we trust that her poem will speak to them as profoundly as this book speaks to us.
