EXPLORERS

In this almost wordless book, a family of four encounters cultural diversity in the exhibits and the patrons of an urban museum.

None of the text issues from people’s mouths; it is found either on signs or exhibition labels, or it expresses actions. In several pages of frontmatter, readers see the nuclear family—a white dad, a beige-skinned mom, a perhaps school-age child, and a younger child, both white-presenting—meet a scruffy sidewalk vendor advertising “magic.” He creates flying birds from paper and scissors, and, at the older child’s urging, the father buys one. Throughout the book, the child sends the bird flying inside the museum, each time releasing it with a “ksssshhh.” The masterful cartoons convey a dinosaur skeleton with the same ease as the protagonist’s scowling face when a little boy in a brown-skinned Muslim family (mom and sister wear hijab) catches the bird. Although the protagonist’s father appropriately reprimands his offspring for this rudeness, the premise is unlikely (inside a museum, flying objects are discouraged, by guards if not by caregivers). Worse, when the child is inadvertently separated from mom, dad, and sib, a great moment of panic arises when the child stands alone between a brown-skinned family and a family of Orthodox Jews. A sweet double-page spread of multicultural bonding with the Muslim family in the butterfly garden does not diminish disturbing undercurrents.

A thousand mixed messages at the museum.