I Dream of a Journey

Miyakoshi (The Way Home in the Night) creates a haunting story about a hotel owner who longs to travel. Exquisitely drafted black-and-white charcoal drawings show the owner, a rodent with whiskers, nattily dressed, behind the front desk of a cozy, old-fashioned hotel, moodily lit by a single desk lamp. His guests “come and go. Many of them even became friends,” but he has to keep the hotel running, and when he lies alone in his bed under the eaves, “a feeling of wanting to go far away wells up inside.” He allows himself to dream of a journey in which “unexpected things happen every day.” The sequence is filled with light and color—golden sand, lavender shadows—as he imagines traveling, with a “big bag,” to visit old friends. But it’s only a vision. He will go one day, he vows: “Someday, I will surprise everyone.” The story’s melancholy exploration of feeling trapped over time will resonate both with kids and, perhaps even more acutely, with the adults reading to them. Miyakoshi’s dreamy vision of a smoothly functioning society inhabited entirely by animals creates an enchantment all its own. Ages 4–8. [em](Mar.) [/em]