We Go to the Park

Unlike the rest of the world, “where everything is so big there’s no room/ for it inside of us,” the park offers refuge to the child who narrates this uninhibited prose poem. “Anything can happen” at the park, where, sometimes, the world changes. “There might be a creature in a yellow raincoat with wild hair/ who smells like lightning.” On the next spread, Alemagna (Pepper and Me) paints a figure that suggests a bonfire billowing up to the sky next to a jungle gym. Evocative text from Stridsberg (The Summer of Diving) captures the intoxication of meeting a kindred spirit: “The wind is the breath of a dragon./ We let it take us where it will.” The next time the narrator goes to the park, the child isn’t there: “Sometimes it feels as if all of life/ is made up of longing.” Then lightning strikes again. Blots of color and streams of expressive line show children of various skin tones playing on fanciful structures, in meadows and clearings, their emotions—contentment, exasperation, joy—readable in their bodies. The park is a place of liberation and passion, the creators convey, where “the birdlike old ladies on benches exist,/ and the friendly drunks exist,/ as do ice cream cones and cotton candy and rainbows.” Ages 13–up. (May)