LITTLE O WANTED TO KNOW

Lowercase letter o embarks on a physical and emotional journey.

“Once upon a line, / o sat before p, and n was behind.” But o doesn’t care for the rigidity of alphabetical order, and don’t get her started on the Alphabet Song: “Must we sing the song this way? / What if we sung it from z to a?” In frustration, o rolls off and ends up in a land of shapes, but still she doesn’t fit in, which undermines her self-esteem. This letters-as-characters story won’t be mistaken for Chicka Chicka Boom Boom—it’s self-help intended for kids, and though it’s well meaning, it’s too long and meandering and on the didactic side. The narrative, which has its roots in a viral TikTok video, culminates with o realizing that she’s actually Zero, after which there’s some straining for Seussian uplift, and by this point, Sarason seems to have given up on trying to make her rhymes scan (“Finding a place within herself, / O made her dream come true.… // And if you look close enough, / you’ll find O within yOu.” Barroux does what he can with a cast restricted to letters, shapes, and, eventually, numbers, rendering each with a single color (o is purple), skinny limbs, and ping-pong-ball–like eyes with dot pupils. The characters go about their business on flower-speckled green grass, without which this story, which is largely set against open space, might look rather dystopian.

Uplifting but rambling.