If you combined a game of Exquisite Corpse, textual erasure, and the fantastic coloration of outsider art, you might come somewhat close to the gorgeous new book Of Lamb. Out this month from McSweeney’s, Of Lamb is a collaboration between poet Matthea Harvey and artist/illustrator Amy Jean Porter, and the sum of its parts is unlike anything we’ve seen before.

The project’s original text was a biography of the 19th-century British essayist Charles Lamb, which Harvey proceeded to white-out until only fragments and phrases remained. She then turned the much-reduced manuscript over to artist Porter, who created 106 gouache-and-ink images to illustrate Harvey’s melancholy, dreamlike poem.

Of Lamb is a work of such subtle, haunting, spellbinding beauty it is virtually impossible to describe it. Fantastical and yet, so strangely, achingly ‘real’ in its tracking of love, loss, grief, and again love” ~ Joyce Carol Oates

The titular lamb travels from Mary’s yard to a mental facility and beyond, coming into contact with former Red-Soxer Manny Ramirez, newscaster Brian Williams, and Oprah. Like the bizarre but beautiful outcome of a genetic mutation, he turns shades of bright orange, neon green, and deep blue, all the while going through a range of totally familiar human emotions.

A totally tweaked retelling of the classic nursery rhyme, Of Lamb is a singular experience that will entrance any age. And if you hunger for more children’s books for grown-ups, don’t miss our all-time favorites, in two installments.

Kirstin Butler is writing an adaptation of Gogol for the Google era called Dead SULs, but when not working spends far, far too much time on Twitter. She currently lives in Cambridge, MA.