Our Building

In this surprising metropolitan fantasy, three unnamed children—two portrayed with brown skin, and one bespectacled child with pale skin—narrate a shared adventure as they discover a world beyond their “boring, hard, and gray” apartment building. From its windows, they can see an enormous distant tree that beckons to them. Coelho (Ten-Word Tiny Tales) writes with evocative language about the trio’s venturing into the forest, feeling the trees’ bark, and knowing when they’ve found the right one: “from a crack a song is spilling,/ a song of rustles and whooshes.” Tumbling into the tree’s rooty depths in a fantastical moment, the three encounter new sights, new tastes, and, at last, an ancient, bearded being who gifts the trio a stone that allows them to connect their apartment building with the natural forces around it—“to the land’s bedrock.” Johnson (The Thing at 52) employs airbrush-style softness spangled with gleams of light; in fanciful art, the gifts of the diverse community soon emerge as color blooms toward the end of this exploration of the spiritual geography that underlies an urban-built environment. Ages 6–10. (Aug.)