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PICTURE BOOKS
Bassi, Sandro

Alien Nation

56 pp. | Levine Querido | April, 2021 | Trade ISBN 978-1-64614-038-1 $18.99
(2) K-3 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.
Reviewer: Eric Carpenter | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2021

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