DREAM JOURNEY

Eduar (Jooka Saves the Day, 1997, etc.) composes here a classic dreamtime walkabout, a wonder quest, that starts when Anatole the bactrian camel begins to read from his “ancient book” and the boy Jules drifts off to sleep between the camel’s humps. Anatole is on the move, swimming the Southern Sea, surfing through crashing breakers, getting lost in the jungle outside Quito, scaling peaks, outrunning lightning. All the while, Jules snoozes peacefully away. Eduar catches the action in rhyme, one sentence to a page, with Anatole’s dashing feats on the left, and Jules’s torpor noted on the right: “Anatole rides bravely along a wire from the trees./Jules is kissed by an orchid-scented breeze.” The artwork is up to the energy and the exoticism of the tale, with great cymbal-crashes of vivid color conjuring a thunderstorm, a foaming sea, a busy street. Despite such charged images, the book works as a lullaby: Jules may bounce around the world, but still he slumbers on. (Picture book. 2-5)