UNDER A MELODY

This wordless picture book follows a group of musicians and dancers as they embark on a transformative, fantastical journey.

The characters—mostly adult and all White—are nameless. After walking across the title page in the iconic Abbey Road pose, a quartet (double bass, acoustic guitar, flute, and vocals) enjoys a jam session in a gray outdoor area until color floats into the frame behind white bubbles that emanate from the flute. The people enter a colored-pencil–and-watercolor Technicolor world, and, à la an improvisational story, become in turn merfolk, monkeys, cats, birds, dogs in outer space, and multicolored fireflies with human heads. The backgrounds change like curtains until a final colorful spread depicting every iteration of form in the original setting, now in full color, with blue grass and green trees and shrubbery. The fireflies now appear to be emanating from the flute that began the adventure. Confusingly, the characters put down their instruments before the dream sequence begins, which renders the theoretical, vague ode to the power of music silent. Strange uses of proportion and a short depth of field make for a storyboard-style sequence devoid of motion, and without a clear musical genre as inspiration, the story—or lack thereof—falls flat on the page. It is notable that, when in human form, several of the characters are fat, and none adhere to conventional Western standards of beauty. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Trippy but incoherent.