THE BOOK OF DENIAL

A boy attempts to rewrite the vicious history of violence toward children.

In this innovative work by noted Mexican creators that’s translated from Spanish, a boy who’s read “many tales of terror—about monsters, the dead, ghosts, haunted houses” is drawn to secretly read the horror story his father is writing. He encounters passages that detail shocking, murderous brutality by adults toward children. The unnamed narrator at first wonders why his father would invent such tales, but newspaper clippings Papá has saved describe acts of unspeakable cruelty from history: “I think now that I would prefer it if they were his own, if he had invented them, if these horror stories only ever happened inside his book.” Mamá has a special letter she “unfolds from time to time to read until she cries.” At school, the teacher describes the murder of the Holy Innocents, reassuring the class, “Don’t worry, those things happened in the past.” But our narrator, all too aware that history repeats itself, cries out, “Where was history when the children were murdered?” Later, seizing upon a solution, he adds “not” throughout his father’s notebook: “These men…did not seize any infant they found with their two bare hands. Then, with those same naked hands, they did not put an end to them.” The story propels readers inexorably toward its shocking climax. Striking black-and-white illustrations in a variety of styles, including photography and graphic design, frequently incorporate lines of text into the art and heighten the emotional impact.

Unforgettable.