SON

A parent’s love letter to a young son.

The second-person narration of the text (translated from Spanish) reads as though it is spoken by one parent to the singular, eponymous son, but the accompanying illustrations expand this reading. Different children are shown from spread to spread as the text offers encouraging words aimed at telling the son “all about this world.” After opening with lyrical descriptions of the real world—“a sky in which there are more stars than grains of sand”—both illustrations and text veer toward the fantastic or metaphorical. “If you put one foot in front of the other, you’ll be able to walk all the way around the world” reads a page depicting a White-appearing child literally walking around the circumference of the globe, which is ringed with buildings and statues representing different nations and cultures. The ensuing pages suggest that this journey is symbolic, with some roads “smooth” and others “rocky,” and “behind the rocks, there are sometimes dragons.” Ultimately, the interaction between the art and text delivers neither a cohesive story nor a clear message. Instead, the colorful art lurches between fantastic and realistic scenes while the text conveys parental love and support without offering readers a clear narrative thread to follow from page to page.

Well-meaning and muddled.