Like an ever-shifting scene in a kaleidoscope, the stories in this book have fragments in common – characters, themes, settings, objects. Each story starts with a kaleidoscopic image from a full drawing on the next page. Each image is related in some way to each story. Each story could be read separately. Taken together, they’re like a strand of unique beads on a very strange necklace. They go together, but it’s hard to find a common message. I enjoyed reading the stories. They were fantastical and strange and mysterious- each a little gem. I kept feeling like I was missing the bigger point of all of them put together however. The author’s note at the end explains that he had been working on a different project prior to the pandemic and then deconstructed it into these loosely connected stories during the quarantine. This makes sense, but in terms of handing this book to a middle schooler… I’m just not sure it’s going to make much sense. It might be an interesting book for a book group to discuss since the overall book still feels very mysterious & unexplained to me.
