DON'T ASK THE DRAGON

A small boy looking for a home on his birthday finds it in an unexpected place.

In a hand-lettered and occasionally rhyming ramble, Sissay has solitary young Alem—portrayed in Stobbs’ lambent paintings as a round-headed, brown-skinned child symbolically (as it turns out) carrying a stack of small buildings on his back—asking a bear, a fox, and other animals where he should go to find a home and getting only a chorus of “I don’t know” and the titular warning in reply. The story then takes an even sharper turn to the allegorical as a huge but benign dragon arrives to invite Alem to tea, inform him that his name means “The World” (as it does, in Arabic), then point him toward a welcoming town that, apparently, the boy had left in the first scene and is named, according to the dragon, “I Don’t Know.” “Home was always inside him,” is what Alem ultimately concludes. The boy’s backpack, a lighthouse visible in several backgrounds, and other ambiguously meaningful details make the illustrations more inscrutable than clarifying, and worthy as that last insight is, the way he reaches it will likely leave readers feeling as if they’ve missed a few steps. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A confusing jumble of images and symbols, for all that it may inspire deep thoughts.