ZERO LOCAL

Kindness is contagious in the Murrows’ latest wordless picture book.

The week starts on the Zero Local train the way so many do—with delays. Landscape and figures alike are subsumed in the grays and shadows of textured pencil drawings, capturing the haze of passengers’ Monday frustration. Only two riders break up the gray—a white adult with a yellow hat and a shoulder-riding yellow bird and a young person of color wearing a yellow shirt. The passenger with the yellow hat pulls out pencil and paper to draw a funny picture of birds as a thank-you card for the train driver, a simple act of kindness marked by the driver’s vest’s turning from gray to yellow. The artist’s drawings and kindness continue through the week, until a day comes when they do not board the train. As delays and tension sharply rise, the young rider also decides to create some art and cuts out paper birds to offer to fellow passengers. Where words so often fail, the wordless breathes life into people’s smallest actions and deepest impacts, as the Murrows’ spreads uplift the mundane. It’s a positive love letter to community (even among commuter-train regulars), diversity, and paying it forward. A lack of contrast in the predominantly gray palette may present an obstacle for readers with low sensitivity.

Timely and timeless, as kindness always is.