“A skull speaks in arches and ridges and caverns of bone. It speaks in teeth and cracks, and holes into, and holes through. It says: I was.” This poetic, patterned text goes on to describe various animal skulls, focusing on a particular characteristic of each. “See these hollows, wide as windows and round as moons? They held my eyes. I was the watcher in the winter forest.” A turn of the page shows an illustration of the animal when alive, while artfully showcasing one way it used that physical feature. “When the light was dark … I hunted hares with my eyes full of light. I was.” The visual and textual clues offer opportunities for children to puzzle out what the animal might be before the page turn with its revealing illustration. The narrative concludes with a human skull: “You are the thinker—you can calculate the paths of comets and stars. You are the seeker—you can learn your father’s language, and your grandmother’s too.” Each of the other animals is identified by name at volume’s end, and include a lynx (featured above), deer, wolf, beaver, hummingbird, and owl. Additional information about the skulls appears in the back of the book.