WHERE THE WORLD ENDS

Three companions go on a quest.

“On a sunny and sleepy afternoon,” friends Zip, Trik, and Flip lounge in a field. One or two may be bears while one is a rabbit; all are human-sized, walk on two feet, and wear T-shirts, shorts, and backpacks. Musing about where clouds go—“Maybe they wind up where the world ends”—sparks a journey seeking “the end of the world.” Dek’s watercolor landscapes with visible brush strokes are episodic and fantastical, creating scene after whimsical scene for the protagonists to traverse. An elderly mouse lives in a teapot; a carrot’s feathery leaves loom over one of the friends; a forest spread is an optical illusion, showing paths, tree branches, and hills all curving through the air on the same plane. Zip, Trik, and Flip placidly break various rules without consequence, and everything is copacetic (though a small wolf does bicycle past in the background, transporting a red-hooded kid). The arc’s climax is cryptic. “At the top of a distant hill, they finally saw it. / ‘Ooh!’ they all said together.” They jump around and plant a flag with themselves on it, marking “where the world ends.” Literal-minded readers may feel abandoned: Why is this spot the world’s end? There’s no reason. Readers open to books ending the way children’s play ends may accept it: Zip, Trik, and Flip call this hilltop the world’s end, therefore it is.

Free-spirited or amiably baffling depending on one’s perspective.