THE OTHER SIDE

The king orders the children of his kingdom to find out what is on The Other Side. By various routes and various means, they get there; some arrive sooner, others later. After many years, they return and tell the king, ``The same as here. The same but backwards. Just the same except reversed.'' The king wants them to carry him there, but when they reach The Other Side, it is he who must carry them. He orders the children to take him back; instead, in a kind of negation of the negation, they take him ``to the other side of The Other Side.'' Gukova creates a full-fledged surreal landscape, complete with strange apparatuses, hybrid creatures, impossible architecture that could not be more evocative, and an atmosphere that is at once exotic, nostalgic, and even abstract. Aura's text is almost as abstract, although toward the end it starts to smell like a political metaphor. The brief text is laid out inventively, and printed in a variety of fonts. Everything about this brief work is unusual, to be appreciated first by frequent flyers over Etienne Delessert's landscapes; Gukova's remarkably beautiful vision is a holiday for the heart. A small masterpiece. (Picture book. 5-10)