l to r: Shauntay Grant (Credit: Steve Farmer) and Daniel Minter (Credit: Daniel Minter).

Communicating history to children effectively can be difficult. It is the crowning achievement of The Deepest Blue, a beautiful picture book written in lyrical verse and filled with layered illustrations, that a serious subject is revealed through a young scuba diver’s exploration of the blue depths of the ocean.

Written by Shauntay Grant and illustrated by Daniel Minter, the book invites the reader to accompany a young girl and two other divers out on a boat on the open water.

While swimming deeper into the blue, the group finds a shining light emanating from a sunken slave ship in the darkness of the ocean. The protagonist instantly remembers the “thousand hands the ocean took.” As she follows the light, the blue of the water stunningly develops its own sun, clouds, and suggestion of sky: an entire world happily moving to the “rap of dancing drums; / Asante, Bono, Fanti tongues,” recognizable to the protagonist. The past takes her hand in the form of a “girl with eyes dark as [her own],” and time collapses. The protagonist engages with the spirits and sounds from history without her scuba gear, perhaps no longer needing the protection, and the spirits eventually guide her home.

Throughout the book, Minter’s illustrations show the protagonist accompanied by an apparition of a Sankofa bird – the Akan Adinkra symbol for “go back and take it” – its head and neck turned backwards to symbolize revisiting the past to be better equipped for the future. Or, as the text states: “to move ahead but look behind.” The bird grows as it watches over the protagonist’s journey deeper and deeper into the water and the past; a comforting companion on her discovery of history that is at times painful but nonetheless revelatory.

Grant’s “blue” is a memorable metaphor for all that is bigger than ourselves in the history that we walk, or swim in, every day, reminding the reader of the bravery it takes to truly engage with the past in a meaningful way; to be held by it, while still moving forward.