THE DREAMS WE MADE

A young girl grieves her father, her teammate in building and dreaming.

As the book opens, the girl and her daddy tinker in a moonlit yard. These peas in a pod blissfully build a rocket ship using found materials like cardboard and bubble wrap that gently pop off the page in a collagelike effect. The girl laments her father’s daily absences when he goes to work, but the two continue to work on their project when he returns at night. The mother is seen only briefly by the door the first time the father departs for work; she does not reappear until she shares the news of Daddy’s sudden death over halfway through the book. The cause of his death isn’t stated, so many children experiencing loss will see themselves in the protagonist. The mother does not express her own grief beyond agreeing that she misses Daddy, too. The girl, however, goes through the various stages of grief—denial, bargaining, anger (wordlessly destroying the cardboard creations after sitting in hopeful vigil near them), and acceptance. There is no funeral scene, and no other family or friends are seen, making the story feel simplistic and isolating. We’re told that “for a long time, the little girl didn’t build anything,” but everything is wrapped up in just a few spreads, with the child and her mother completing the rocket by the light of the moon. All characters are light-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

An attempt at exploring loss that fails to launch.