Herve Bouchard

I feel really emotional about this book.

My edition is a beautiful little hardback with beautiful endpapers.

I loved reading this book because it has so much atmosphere and depth. The author and illustrator are both from Quebec and it has a distinct Quebecois feel. Slang words, the way the artist draws the streets, it's all there and it's great.

The art in this book -- I asked my wife (who's an artist) about it and she said that it's most likely a print-making process, that many of the images would take a long time to perfect because of the way the materials work. So the fact that the artist probably had to do each page of the book more than once to get the desired result? That just gave me so much more respect for this book overall.

I loved the muted colour palette and the foggy, soft, spidery images. I love the way the artist has implied form and drawn ghostly cars to hint at the traffic.

The writing? Beautiful. It was really sad and it felt a little sparse, but I think children's books sometimes do just because they're a children's book, for me anyway. I really liked Harvey's character and I liked all the detail the author put into the protagonist.

I will say I felt the ending was a little abrupt for me, but that's a creative choice and it's purely just my opinion.

4 stars from me, a lovely little piece of Canlit.… (meer)