EMBER AND THE ISLAND OF LOST CREATURES

Ember feels like an outsider at his new school for the orphaned and solitary.

Ember is a tiny humanoid with light-brown skin and a mop of black hair who doesn’t remember anything from before he lived in an attic in a city where everything was giant-sized. He longed for friendship, but when he ventured out to try to make a connection, he was accidentally swept into a storm drain and out to a beach. There, sea turtle Lua found and adopted him. Lua brings Ember to the far-off island where she once went to school. The other young creatures Ember meets there include Ana, a salamander, and Viggo, a pugnacious, blue-tongued lizard. Ember keeps a journal with observations and drawings and is both devastated and humiliated when some classmates read it and mock him. Ember’s sweetness seems to attract other creatures—a luminous tentacle, sea urchins reminiscent of the soot sprites in My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away, and a smiling rock Ember dubs Boulder. Lessons at school involve intriguing discussions of camouflage and mimicry and introductions to the unique denizens of the island and surrounding sea. Clear, lovely graphics, rich colors, and intriguing perspectives provide detailed, cinematic depictions of the island world and the young ones’ adventures. Ember’s fierce determination to connect and his empathetic inclination to regard other creatures as benign afford him an impressive kind of courage when he and his classmates encounter the sea monster of his nightmares.

An enchanting, absorbing adventure.