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PICTURE BOOKS
Basil, Krystia

A Sky Without Lines

40 pp. | Minedition | October, 2019 | Trade ISBN 978-988-8341-89-4 $17.99
(2) K-3 Illustrated by Laura Borràs. Arturo may love to look at maps, with their thick lines that show where countries meet, but he does not like the lines on the map (nor the physical wall) that keep him and his mother separated from his father and beloved brother. In this tender story of longing, Arturo fantasizes about a borderless world, while simultaneously recalling fond family memories. He imagines a gap in the map's borders, one he can squeeze through; he dreams of a tunnel that goes beneath the lines; he envisions building a bridge that goes over them; and he dreams of flying, meeting his brother in the sky, which has no lines at all. References in text and art to fútbol, churros, adobe houses, frangipani bushes--combined with a sketchily rendered map on the opening spread--set this story in Mexico. Borràs's highly stylized figures are elongated, with oversized, white-irised eyes and rosy cheeks. Earth tones (rusts, oranges, and browns) match the restrained wistfulness that dominates the first part of the book, replaced with a warm blue in the closing spreads that mark the freedom and togetherness the two brothers find as they fly through the sky, all the way to the moon itself. Birds that fly free make frequent appearances in a story that asks why "the lines [have] to be there in the first place."
Reviewer: Julie Danielson | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2020

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