Run Far, Run Fast

If David Macaulay fictionalized medieval family life in a plague year, he might produce something like this solemn graphic narrative, set in 1348. In pen-and-ink panels notable for their architectural renderings, Decker describes “one small girl in a time of great fear,” when “the gates of the city were locked to keep the Pestilence out.” The anonymous girl, a carpenter’s daughter, lives humbly, surrounded by windswept fields, sagging barns and thatch-roofed cottages. When her father falls ill and soldiers quarantine their home, the girl’s mother helps her escape, saying, “Run far, run fast.” Wandering along dirt roads, through wolf-infested forests, the girl seeks safety in fortified towns and with an enigmatic guardian, the narrator. Readers may guess the purpose of this man’s birdlike mask; several people disaffectedly display the swollen nodes that signal plague. Throughout, Decker evokes the paranoid ambience, if not the gruesomeness, of death-ridden villages. Handwritten exposition appears on the verso pages, while uncaptioned, tightly spaced thumbnail sketches on the recto pages chart the girl’s travels. But while Decker sets the stage gracefully, his drawings of people are awkward. Mitten hands and blank, oval faces suffice for secondary characters, but the central girl’s face conveys only indistinct sorrow. As in his The Letter Home , an idiosyncratic account of WWI, Decker imagines a famously horrific situation and replaces terror with unsettling quietude. Ages 10-up. (Oct.)