THE INVISIBLE WEB

Karst and Lew-Vriethoff follow up their picture book about The Invisible String (2018) that connects loved ones over distances and even after death with an extension of the metaphor.

The “hundreds of Strings” that connect each individual “to everyone we know” also “create a nest that covers the planet, / interlacing us together, cradling us forever.” This is the titular Web, depicted in Lew-Vriethoff’s bright cartoons as sweeping colored lines that circle the globe every which way like an ambitious international airline’s route map. It includes humans, animals, plants, and even weather systems: “Everything is linked!” But the Web is only as strong as the people who remember and care for it, and a double-page spread that shows a frightened, pale-skinned family fleeing a burning city on verso for a refugee tent city in a flowered meadow on recto, where a multiracial peace demonstration is also taking place, depicts both the consequences of forgetting and the healing powers of remembering the Web. In going global with her String, Karst has a very difficult time maintaining her metaphor. The notion of a concrete, tangible bond of love is a child-friendly way to imagine relationships, but making those crisscrossing bonds into a Web of mutual responsibility strains the concept. Will writing one’s cousin truly prevent world war? By the end, Karst has gone overboard: “The Invisible Web is alive! / Its time is right now. / It breathes as we breathe, / pulsating all over our Earth, / the single heartbeat / of life and love.”

Hopelessly tangled.