Tonbo

Caldecott Medalist Say, who grew up in Japan and the U.S., creates a surreal, bittersweet, and sometimes unsettling journey in this time-spanning picture book. The narrator, a white-haired, East Asian–cued man with a walking stick, stumbles upon a simple paper airplane and calls it by the name he gave one as a child: Tonbo. As he follows it, the landscape appears to change, at times into places he recognizes. Encountering a stranger who calls him “son,” the elderly man—who now seems to be traveling backward in time—laughs. “I may be older than your father,” he responds. He sees a reflection that looks like a younger version of himself, and he feels younger, too (“My hands! So smooth—no aches!”). Realizing that “I’m getting younger with each stranger I meet,” he takes in American scenes until coming upon a Japanese garden gate of his youth and hearing himself “humming the song I learned in kindergarten.” There, the figure, now a small child, finds Tonbo when, suddenly, English-speaking voices return the protagonist to the present-day. Say confronts the passing of time head-on, openly perceiving the fragmentary nature of memory. Background characters are portrayed with various skin tones. Ages 4–8. (Oct.)