Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Blexbolex's previous children's books, Seasons and People, toyed with subtle hints of narrative amid their portraits of flora, fauna, and humans; the French artist pushes further into narrative experimentation with this small-format adventure that grows in complexity and strangeness as it progresses. Once again, Blexbolex's angular, vintage-flavored silkscreen illustrations are paired with brief descriptions. Unfolding in just a few pages, the first story segment suggests a mundane school day: "The school, the road, home," reads a tidy cursive font below a sequence of three illustrations. In the second segment, the unseen narrator notices more of the landscape ("The school, the street, the forest, home"). Strange occurrences quickly mount-a pipe-smoking "stranger" arrives, foxlike "bandits" lurk, and a blue "witch" threatens. From there, the book becomes a wild journey involving an upside-down curse (it even affects the text), a kidnapping, a captive elf, the summoning of demons, and more; at one point, the text vanishes, requiring readers to grab hold of the storytelling reins. As a story, it's challenging, mysterious, and even obscure. As an object and a piece of bookmaking, it's a work of art. Ages 8-up. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Horn Book Review
The French illustrator (Seasons, rev. 7/10; People, rev. 9/11) is as provocative as ever in this graphic celebration -- and parody -- of the very idea of story. Like Dr. Seuss's And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street (1937), Ballad compounds the fantastical -- literally, here: each chapter has twice the pages, less two, of its predecessor (4, 6, 10, 18); at 130 pages, the seventh and last chapter is half the book -- just one instance of Blexbolex's intricate crafting. Meanwhile, the story expands from chapter one's uneventful walk ("The school, the road, home") to closer observation of the real world before entering an imagined world and its characters ("the stranger" -- storyteller, musician, hero; "bandits" resembling Pinocchio's Cat and Fox; "the witch"). Each chapter begins with a prcis, but it is Blexbolex's square illustrations, captioned with just a couple of nouns, that convey the action and accumulate references -- a queen, a kidnapping, a dragon, a volcano, mountains, a waterfall, a castle, a captive elf, night, storm, rescue, escape. Ultimately, at dawn, the stranger and queen arrive "home." Blexbolex's simple forms range in colors from gentle blues and greens to the arresting yellow of the stranger's raincoat and his trouser's fluorescent pink; coarse grids of halftone dots add modeling and subtlety to the elegantly composed scenes. An intriguing book -- one to unravel, decode, and ponder in successive re-readings. joanna rudge long (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Pictured in a long spate of silkscreen tableaux bound up in a small, bricklike volume, a bored child's daydream zigzags its way into an increasingly wild fantasy adventure. Printed (seemingly) on rough denim, the grainy, stylized scenes are designed to be understood at a glance and paged through quickly. Staid opening images of a school, a road and a house are transformed by both increasing detail and the appearances of new characters. These range from a pair of bandits and a witch to a duster-wearing stranger, police officers, soldiers, a dragon and others. Even as both characters and visual complexity multiply, readers are further shaken up by scenery occasionally being turned upside down and later sideways. Ultimately, the stranger becomes a protagonist who escapes various dangers, discovers treasure and rescues a princess from a sorcerer. With her, he defeats the witch amid bolts of spell-cast lightningand comes home at last. Aside from allusive chapter heads"A hero is revealed. During a long and perilous journey several scores are settled. In the forest, night itself is an enchantress"the narrative is entirely composed of one- or two-word identifiers beneath each picture that are strung into sequences ("The school, / the road, / home") while, occasionally, themselves turning upside down or even vanishing in part: "the ." Despite an unconventional presentation and dizzying twists, the tale ends up on a classic course. The delicious temptation to take an active role in the surreal adventure by adding details or even whole subplots will be hard to resist. (Picture book. 6-9)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
