Mäko

Is art useful? It is when the artist is Mäko, a hulking walrus who uses his tusks to create fish sculptures on the ice floe on which he lives. But his creations are more than just statues: since they are inspired by the fish below, “Mäko’s life-sized maps help all of his friends find food.” After all but one of the sculptures are destroyed when the floe breaks up, the seals and penguins that rely on Mäko’s art to find their dinners realize that his sculptures are attracting the fish, too. The artwork in Béziat’s debut is breathtaking: the landscape is sparely evoked in swathes of pale sky, inky sea, and white ice, while dense cross-hatching gives Mäko a sense of heft and power. Béziat is also playful in his use of perspective: in a bird’s-eye view of the ice floe, its rocky terrain takes on the shape of a giant fish (with Mäko as the eye). The story suffers a bit in translation, its message about artistic passion murky, but it’s impossible not to be enchanted by Béziat’s polar seascapes. Ages 4–up. (May)