WAR IS OVER!

The team behind the 2024 Oscar-winning animated short War Is Over!: Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko translates their work into picture-book format.

Here’s an image you rarely see on the first page of a kids’ book: armed men on a battlefield. It’s Christmastime, and “the Red Jackets and the Green Coats [are] fighting,” the text explains. “No one [knows] why.” A carrier pigeon named Julia has been enlisted to transport “important orders” from the command center to a red-jacketed soldier named Winston, but the bird has another job. Helping Winston play “a secret game of chess,” Julia delivers notes containing his chess moves to a green-coated soldier, who in turn gives Julia his moves for Winston. The men’s remote chess competition animates the book’s pacifist message: In other circumstances, two enemies could be friends. Narciso’s illustrations, rendered in drab military colors, conjure no particular era, the suggestion being that the book’s message is timeless. The comically rubbery-looking faces of the largely pale-skinned soldiers help offset the grim turn the story takes, although its conclusion is hopeful. John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1971 peace anthem “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” inspired the short film that sparked this book—the couple’s son, Sean Ono Lennon, was involved in both projects—and the song’s lyrics are woven into the text, for the most part smoothly.

A fine introduction to a complex topic for mature-enough kids.