By Kate Hosford
Uma looks up at a sky full of stars, tries to count them, and goes looking for someone who can tell her how big infinity is.
Uma is outside at night in a new pair of red shoes when she looks up and the sky is crowded with stars. She tries to count them and feels very small. So the next day she starts asking. Her friend says infinity is a racetrack you can run round forever. Another says it's a number eight lying on its side. Her teacher takes a noodle and cuts it in half, then halves the half, and says you'd never run out. Her grandmother says something else entirely, and that's the one Uma keeps.
This is a genuine, quiet story that happens to be about the biggest idea in mathematics, and it works because it never resolves. Uma collects answers, and none of them is the answer, and the book lets that stand. Swiatkowska's paintings are strange and dreamlike and give the whole thing a hush. What makes it useful is that it hands your child several different pictures of infinity instead of one definition, so they can turn the idea over and pick the one that fits their head. It's the softest book on this shelf and the one most likely to be asked for again at bedtime, and it will start a conversation you won't finish.