FLATLAND

A brightly colored blob arrives in Flatland, makes relationships and builds a community, then leaves.

At the beginning of the story, Owuza is just a collection of concentric, digitally collaged, uneven circles—“no more than a speck.” He develops what look to be eyes, hair and a body, and he carries his heart in his outstretched hand. He finds friends in Flatland; they share stories and songs, create “beautiful things,” help and heal. Then one day, Owuza is gone from Flatland. The Flatlanders look for him but do not find him—until they reach out to one another, and “there, in the center of them all, was Owuza. In all that they shared, he was with them always.” Apparently written in response to the death of his daughter, Sayre’s tale strives to be elemental but ends up simply oblique. It never leaves the mythic plane it begins on, keeping readers at a distance. Children are unlikely to understand what’s going on with either Owuza’s departure or his “reappearance” among the Flatlanders. Emberley’s illustrations pop, placing rough-edged, circular yellow, turquoise, lime-green and fuchsia shapes against a terra-cotta background; in the reiteration of concentric shapes and dots, her designs echo Aboriginal art. In this way, they are an apt emotional and conceptual complement to the text, but they do little to illuminate it for young readers.

This metaphor for death is just too metaphorical to succeed.