#295 of 1001 · May 22, 2021

We’ve all had moments when we sensed we were a bit out of place. Now imagine this feeling writ large. What would it mean to lack true community? We would undoubtedly set off in search of the place where we belonged. And the young boy at the heart of Lane Smith’s There Is a Tribe of Kids does just that. He wanders from place to place, along the way passing through a multitude of habitats and environments, rendered in a variety of eye-popping textures in Smith’s acrylic-sprayed oil paintings augmented with colored pencil, graphite, collage, and digital techniques. Despite the boy’s best efforts, he never quite seems to fit in. Whether he is living in prehistoric times or simply traversing a wilderness far from civilization is a question readers must answer for themselves. Smith adopts a precise and minimalistic writing style; though he conveys the story through a simple list of collective names for various animals and elements of nature, the emotional whole is far greater than the sum of its parts. At the story’s appealing conclusion, the boy finds a group with whom he truly belongs—and the book’s title, seemingly an innocuous reference to the events of the opening pages, takes on a different significance altogether. #tribe #kids #animal #animals #nature #loneliness #friends #book #books #childrensbooks #beautifulbooks #picturebook #picturebooks #picturebookillustration #picturebookillustrations #picturebookart #childrensbookillustration #childrensliterature #illustration #kidlit #kidsbooks #bookworm #booklover #booklovers #bibliophile #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookstagrammers #instabook #instabooks