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PICTURE BOOKS
Ungerer, Tomi

Non Stop

48 pp. | Phaidon | September, 2020 | Trade ISBN 978-1-8386-6159-5 $16.95
(2) K-3 This posthumous work by iconoclastic picture-book creator Ungerer is austere and puzzling, yet ultimately hopeful. Left behind on a lifeless dystopian planet ("Birds, butterflies, and rats were gone. Grass and leaves had withered. Flowers had turned into memories...Everyone had gone to the moon"), a man named Vasco roams adrift from one harrowing scenario to the next. Adhering to an idiosyncratic sense of logic, physics, and time, he is literally guided through the narrative by his sentient shadow, which consistently saves him "JUST IN TIME!" At one point, charged with delivering a letter to the wife of a tentacled green creature named Nothing, Vasco survives a flood of biblical proportions to make the delivery. At the request of Nothing's ailing wife, Vasco adopts the couple's green child, Poco, and together they continue the journey. The pair endures pits of "gargling" magma, globs of lilac gelatin, and brigades of tanks, ultimately arriving at a cake-shaped refuge in the middle of a desert. An afterword reveals that the two "are still aging there, sheltered in peace." The surreal landscapes are dominated by simplified geometric forms, bold shadows, and strong horizon lines. Each illustration is singular, intriguing, and diffused with peculiar colors. This disorientating tale references several well-worn stories of adventure, exodus, and environmental turmoil; however, its greatest strength is found in its heroes' resilience against all odds.
Reviewer: Patrick Gall | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2020

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