MEL THE CHOSEN

Mel, angry at adults who never listen, is pulled into a magical world where she learns she’s the Chosen One.

Chasing her cat across the rooftop of her apartment building, the bespectacled redhead falls into a neighboring home, where a white-bearded old man is taking tea with three talking animals wearing 19th-century clothing. They’ve been waiting for her, they explain eagerly, because only she can break the curses of Malcape the Magnificent, who turned young Otto into the old man Mel sees before her. Mel’s journey past animal tea parties and magical royals has illustrations that sometimes evoke Wonderland or Oz. The text doesn’t always make clear sense in context, perhaps a result of the translation from the original Italian, and many narrative elements are dropped when they’re no longer useful for the allegory. (Whatever happens to Otto’s talking-animal friends? Why doesn’t the Book of Return, which brings the dead back to life, remain important?) But gorgeous color and action are what keep pages turning, not the quest itself. Memories are rendered in sepia or black and white while the magical land of Here&Now is richly saturated. The interplay between different color schemes, sometimes within a single panel, plays deliciously with mood. The often wordless two-page spreads cleverly evoke movement or the passage of time. Some signage and sound effects are not translated, though meaning is always clear from illustration. All human characters are White.

Dynamic, evocative color and movement easily carry this allegorical fantasy wherever the text is weak.