THIS IS NOT MY STORY

A story about stories and genres.

As the book opens, a brown-skinned boy is flying a spaceship, surrounded by green aliens in their own spacecrafts, but announces to the unseen author/narrator that this is the wrong story for him (“I definitely don’t believe in aliens”). The boy ends up on a blank white page, looking startled, while the narrator considers other potential roles for him, such as Cattle King Carl, “quickest wrangler in the West,” a dragon-slaying knight, the victim of a Transylvanian vampire, and a plant in a science textbook…all of which the child rejects. Flustered, the narrator leaves this poor boy on a blank page in only his underwear before finally asking the character what story he wants to be in. The narrator is similarly unsuccessful at coming up with that tale, but the protagonist has a solution. Huyck’s artistic style remains relatively consistent while the settings and palettes change from story to story. Uytdewilligen’s clever, inspired work of metafiction will have readers giggling at the boy’s commentary and also getting a lesson in the concept of genre. The narrator appears at the end, a light-skinned adult, pen and sketchpad in hand, opposite a list of genres.

A fun patchwork of stories that encourages out-of-the-box thinking.