June 1, 2021
Gr 2-4-Bassi's new black-and-white wordless book is a story about alienation, and an indictment of technology. In an underground train, all the citizens have right-out-of-science-fiction alien-looking heads on top of human bodies wearing conventional clothing, and they are all staring down at their phones. No one notices anything around them until, around the 11th page, the Wi-Fi connection goes down. As they look up and around to see why they have no connection, the panels become chaotic, and it seems as if the riders are freaking out and even exploding. The illustrations become more animated at this point, but as soon as the Wi-Fi is restored, they turn back to their devices and order returns. Children who enjoy explaining a story through pictures could come up with some creative dialogue for this story and tie our present-day technology habits to those of the alien-like creatures in this book. VERDICT For educators seeking a dramatic path into a discussion of modern habits, this book is it. It's unflinching in its assessment of human nature, and provides no hopeful ending.-Tanya Boudreau, Cold Lake P.L., Alta.
Copyright 2021 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
August 20, 2021
Grades 5-8 This wordless book in pictures opens simply enough with the image of a pedestrian, a man walking along looking at his cell phone. Sounds pretty, well, pedestrian, right? Look again. The man has a human body but a bizarre head--the squidlike head of an alien. Readers follow the man as he enters a vast hall, which appears to be a train station filled with other aliens, almost all absorbed with their phones. We now follow a clutch of them as they crowd into an arriving train car, where they remain glued to their screens, save for an alarming few moments when cell reception is lost. Reminiscent of Shaun Tan's work, the pictures, executed in shades of grey and white, are endlessly imaginative but, frankly, disquieting, as if they have been executed in a fever dream. What does it all mean? Well, probably that the aliens are alienated from one another because of their slavish attention to the artificial world of their phones. Ultimately, whatever readers will decide, it's the haunting illustrations that will stay with them.
COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
January 1, 2021
Venezuelan artist Bassi's picture-book debut features various aliens as characters -- but whether a character has a single eye or dozens of minuscule eyeballs, all are glued to their smartphone screens. In this wordless fable for the digital age, a subway commute turns terrifying when a toddler on the train finds and turns on a twentieth century-style cordless (and screenless) telephone. This simple action somehow disrupts all the passengers' wireless connections, causing a temporary, and wonderfully surreal, breakdown of their very selves. Exquisitely detailed, realistic grayscale pencil illustrations pull viewers into the setting, utterly familiar except inhabited by a large cast of mesmerizing (and uniquely designed) alien characters. Employing mostly double-page spreads, Bassi occasionally mixes in comic-book-style paneling to control the pacing and artfully varies scale to enhance the storytelling. The best wordless (well, mostly: signage in Spanish is incorporated into the illustrations) picture books are enhanced by careful re-readings, where previously unnoticed details provide deeper understandings, and this is one such book, so full of detail and general oddness that readers will demand multiple encounters and lots of time to pore over its finely composed pages.
(Copyright 2021 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)
March 1, 2021
Venezuelan artist Bassi's picture-book debut features various aliens as characters -- but whether a character has a single eye or dozens of minuscule eyeballs, all are glued to their smartphone screens. In this wordless fable for the digital age, a subway commute turns terrifying when a toddler on the train finds and turns on a twentieth century-style cordless (and screenless) telephone. This simple action somehow disrupts all the passengers' wireless connections, causing a temporary, and wonderfully surreal, breakdown of their very selves. Exquisitely detailed, realistic grayscale pencil illustrations pull viewers into the setting, utterly familiar except inhabited by a large cast of mesmerizing (and uniquely designed) alien characters. Employing mostly double-page spreads, Bassi occasionally mixes in comic-book-style paneling to control the pacing and artfully varies scale to enhance the storytelling. The best wordless (well, mostly: signage in Spanish is incorporated into the illustrations) picture books are enhanced by careful re-readings, where previously unnoticed details provide deeper understandings, and this is one such book, so full of detail and general oddness that readers will demand multiple encounters and lots of time to pore over its finely composed pages. Eric Carpenter
(Copyright 2021 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)
Starred review from March 15, 2021
An artist from Venezuela debuts a wordless picture book in which creatures are obsessed with their mobile phones. At first glance, the characters appear to be, as the title suggests, extraterrestrials. Bipedal figures have oversized heads, each unique--sporting spikes, cubes, bulbous growths, geometric shapes, an elephantine trunk, an upside-down cone, or tentacles. Closer inspection reveals light-skinned human bodies dressed in contemporary winter clothing. The juxtaposition of some bare human arms with the heads raises questions about these travelers, who pass through a railway station, then board an underground train. The station is named "La Nacionalien." The setting and compositions, rendered in black and white with detailed crosshatchings, recall Brian Selznick's graphite work in The Invention of Hugo Cabret (2007). Bassi is a skilled draftsman. His foreshortened close-up of a child in a stroller reaching toward a seat on which sits a clunky, early-model handheld phone focuses attention on the object that will change everything. After the pudgy finger pushes a button, everyone's phones signal interference/dysfunction and heads explode--literally. Sequential panels portray individual eruptions; dramatic double-page spreads display co-mingling springs, cubes, sprockets, and tentacles. Then the child's mother extends her hand, and order (and service) are restored. Viewers who studied an earlier map will ponder the purpose of that vintage phone. Those who ruminate on the title and the still-distracted phone gazers will have a eureka moment. A clever, enigmatic glimpse at first-world alienation. (Picture book. 4-8)
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