CITY UNDER THE CITY

A child living in a surveillance state uncovers another way of life.

Bix and her family live under the constant supervision of the Eyes, floating yellow orbs with robotic arms and complete control over the daily lives of the inhabitants of this futuristic, unnamed abstract city. Through short, straightforward prose and comic panels depicting a space age–esque setting, readers learn that Bix dislikes the Eyes’ assistance and surveillance, occasionally feels lonely, and hates her Eye-assigned reading. One day, she follows a rat underground and discovers the ruins of a very different city—one that appears much like one in which readers may live, albeit abandoned. There, she finds a library, a museum, and a grocery store—and evidence of a life before the Eyes, even the idea that once not everyone liked the Eyes. After a few days, she misses her family and returns to the city above with her new rat companion and a mountain of books. Everyone but the Eyes rejoices, and Bix begins a reading revolution that ends with the destruction of the Eyes. In this half-baked Nineteen-Eighty-Four–meets–City of Ember for kids, Yaccarino’s choppy writing leaves much to be desired. Though the text is simple, the concepts seem to be aimed at an older age range; the result is hardly the life-changing reading Bix finds underground. Bix and most of the city’s inhabitants are purple-skinned; other characters have skin the white of the page. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Uninspiring.