Astro

Astro, an astronaut in a red suit, lands on a rocky planet filled with delightfully surreal life-forms, which Spanish creator Marsol renders with intricate ink lines and lush paint strokes punctuated by collage-like mixed-media elements. Dry, understated writing smoothly describes creatures—some depicted as giant rock formations with arms and legs—that look on as Astro investigates their planet. “We had never seen such a strange being,” the life-forms observe, before engaging in recess-esque play with Astro, who’s always entertainingly findable as a Lilliputian figure among craggy cliffs. Astro soon meets and befriends this ethereal volume’s narrator, whose orange body and long, swan-like neck give it an inquisitive aura. Then one day, catastrophe strikes: his new friend dies, and Astro is bereft. The creature continues to narrate (“It was hard for Astro to understand I was gone”), and the story’s tone morphs from whimsical to philosophical as other beings help Astro grieve before bidding him farewell in a pensive epic—an elegy to the creator’s father, as explained in an endnote—that grapples with the meaning of existence: “Maybe beings and worlds disappear, but questions stay floating forever.” Ages 3–8. (Feb.)