#919 of 1001 · February 5, 2023

Barbara Lehman expands and deepens a wordless slice of speculative fiction with Red Again, the sequel to her lightly magical The Red Book. The story begins where its predecessor left off: with a boy finding the red book dropped by the girl. He brings it to his house and, high up in a little cupola, begins flipping through the pages. Simultaneously, another child in a fishing boat near a tropical island discovers a red book floating in the water. The two readers discover that they can see each other through the pages of their books, and they eventually come together in person. However, the real shock comes with the story’s mind-bending conclusion: the boy lets the red book fall into the snow…where it is discovered by the girl from the previous story, somehow at the start of her adventure. This revelation ties the duology, already infused with an inscrutable spatial magic, into a bizarre time loop. Lehman’s cheerful flat-style art belies a complex treatise on friendship, connection, and helical chronology. #red #girl #snow #boy #island #lonely #loneliness #friend #friends #friendship #book #books #childrensbooks #beautifulbooks #picturebook #picturebooks #childrensbookillustration #childrensliterature #illustration #kidlit #kidsbooks #bookworm #booklover #booklovers #bibliophile #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookstagrammers #instabook #instabooks