Cosimo Geracitano has carved a book of jade-with bound pages that can be turned. To describe the two-year process, Daniela Geracitano Vance has described how her father set likenesses of Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi into four pages of British Columbia nephrite, weighing 155 pounds, in The Jade Book: A Stone of Hope (Colossal Creations $24.94). "As he carved, opera music often blared in the background so that it could be heard despite the earplugs and noise of the machines,"; she says. The linked jade tablets feature a dove escaping from behind bars to signify the challenge of achieving harmony and creating a better global community. Gandhi's message is, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world."; Mother Teresa's quote is "Works of love are works of peace."; Martin Luther King's message is, "Let freedom ring."; Geracitano, who lives in Coquitlam, was born in southern Italy in 1947 and immigrated to Canada at age 20 with no money or winter clothing, unable to speak English. The sculptor's first work was a Carrara marble bust of his daughter Daniela at age ten. In The Jade Book, Vance has traced local traditions of jade carving to the Salish people who used water and sandstone to cut jade found in the Fraser, Bridge and Thompson Rivers. 0-9731390-1-3; www.colossalcreations.com

[BCBW Summer 2004]