Bound To Stay Bound

Booklist - 09/15/2024 *Starred Review* Feiffer came to artistic maturity in the 1970s, an era when works for young readers took on deep, uncomfortable emotions with rambunctious storytelling and humor that might give many contemporary young readers a disorienting shock. It's with that energy that he presents the story of siblings Shirley, Pearlie, and Curly, who find themselves lost in a surreal dimension filled with Alice in Wonderland–like creatures as menacing as they are absurd. Separated, but willing to go with the loopy flow, the siblings find the solution to their geographic and emotional issues in their mother, who is ever-pining for something lost long ago. The story is delivered with such breathless wackiness you could almost miss the permeating fear of abandonment and betrayal, but in Feiffer's world here, nothing is safe—not your father or mother, your brother, sister, or children, your home, your hair, your other half, your identity, nor even your face. Feiffer exemplifies this with jangling linework, creating a world and characters whose very existence vibrates between frenetic childlike energy and fraying, out-of-control anxiety, right down to the word balloons and the letters inside them. The density of wordplay, as well as the narrative drive toward an adult’s realization of their own responsibilities, could make this a challenge for the target audience, but it’s a challenge worth taking—there's nothing out there quite like it. - Copyright 2024 Booklist.