PEOPLE ARE WEIRD

With exasperation and, ultimately, appreciation, a child considers various puzzling people in Brazilian American author Santos’ tale, translated from Portuguese.

“Have you ever noticed the world is full of weird people?” asks the pale-skinned, redheaded narrator while gazing out the living room window at passersby. For starters: “At school, there is a boy who tells everyone he is a real magician. But if he was, why would he need to go to school? Weird.” Here’s another one: “My neighbor’s dad thinks that people will start talking about him if his garden and lawn don’t look perfect. But if they look perfect, aren’t people going to talk about him exactly because of that? Weird.” The narrator furnishes several more examples; young readers will be amused by these observations (which play like jokes) and delighted to be able to see beyond the protagonist’s literal-mindedness. Taken together, the story’s yuks make a point that crystalizes when the narrator’s book-length bewilderment (“Weird”) finally leads to a mind-opening epiphany: “Could it be normal to be weird? If so, would it be weird to be normal?” Sobral’s mixed-media illustrations, which largely depict urban scenes populated with a multigenerational, diverse cast, are dominated by the less-often-used colors in the crayon box (you know: the weird ones). The images have an artfully topsy-turvy quality, reflecting the endearingly discombobulated narrator’s attempts to make sense of the world.

A different kind of dare-to-be-different book.