For me, it was Masquerade by Kit Williams. It wasn't that it was just so incredibly beautiful- it was also so interesting, and it led to such social experiences.
I was gifted Masquerade as a child -when I was five or six- by a friend of the family- the wife of one of my dad's colleagues who was something of a local artist herself. I didn't understand the book at first-I thought it was like all other books where you sit by yourself, read one page in silence, turn the page, read the next page in silence, until you're done, you put it on your bookshelf, and that's that. It's dinner time.
I can't remember how I realised this is a different book, it's not a book to hide away, but a book to show off to people, to watch them hunt for the rabbit hidden on each page, to read out the riddles, to laugh out loud, to be completely and absolutely charmed by this gorgeous, gorgeous book.
I remember showing it to my uncles, aunts, cousins, friends, basically any visitor to our place (and there were many- my parents were very sociable people with large families) was treated to a walk-through of Masquerade. I don't know how annoying they found me (this whole thing of publicly hating on children or feeling embarrassed by them wasn't really a thing back in my day)- as far as I remember, everyone I showed it to seemed just as charmed and delighted by the magic and artistry of this book as I was.
And my mom and I- oh we looked at those spectacular paintings and read the story a million times together. That sunset scene! And the one where the lunar eclipse is happening, and all the horrors of the world are tumbling out of the moon's mouth! And the woman swimming, the painting of the green water, where she breaks it with her hand? the white foam?
The book was lying around my parents place well into my adulthood, I remember picking it up and leafing through it when I used to visit. It was a sturdy, hardback book, with thick glossy pages, and even thirty forty whatever years on, it looked like new.
Then they died, and I was in a different country and my brother dealt with the stuff in their place. I wonder what happened to the book, and whether it's continuing to charm and delight some other large family, somewhere.
by 1000andonenites