Piero

Twenty years since its original French publication, Baudoin's autobiographical homage to his older brother, Piero, and their shared childhood makes its English-language debut, admiringly translated by cartoonist Madden. Growing up between Nice, where their father worked, and Villars-sur-Var ( our Mom's village, our village ), the brothers were always together to enjoy canoe and alien adventures and Baudoin learned how to draw with Piero. Piero's whooping cough delayed formal schooling, which required adaptation and negotiation; it's a little dumb to grow up, the brothers agreed. Adulthood inevitably arrived, as one brother-artist quit and the other brother-artist-to-be kept dreaming. Referring to Baudoin as an ink-stained Proust, Madden writes astutely about the septuagenarian comics legend in his introduction, illuminating details even Baudoin-groupies might not know. For example, Baudoin's trademark virtuosic brush art, Madden explains, is replaced here by the busy, scratching and scribbling lines of a Rotring ArtPen, presumably to emulate the ballpoint pens and pencils with which the young protagonists were constantly drawing. For newbies and aficionados alike, this artistic remembrance-of-things-past should prove poignantly compelling.--Terry Hong Copyright 2019 Booklist

This affecting, Proustian dip into childhood memory follows a relationship between two brothers in all its intensity and complexity. Young Edmond, nicknamed Momon, plays, competes, and draws with his brother, Piero, who is slightly better than he is at everything. Living in the French countryside with only each other for company, the brothers grow up slightly out of step with the rest of the world. Their shared fantasies of communing with a space alien or flying through the air are as real to them as their home and parents, and they become obsessed with art to the point that it comes as a shock when they go to school and discover other kids don't draw all the time. As they get older, the brothers are tempted away from creative passions by the allure of impressing girls and competing with rival boys, and they realize that their parents can afford to indulge only one son in pursuing an artistic career. Baudoin lays pages in loose pen-and-ink, with rounded figures inhabiting vibrantly sketched settings, which suggest something between classical Renaissance cartoons and great children's book artists like Maurice Sendak and Edward Ardizzone. His evocation of childhood, at once dreamlike and intensely vivid, makes the reader inclined to agree with the brothers when they say that "it's a little dumb to grow up." (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.