cover image We Are All Me

We Are All Me

Jordan Crane. Toon, $12.95 (36p) ISBN 978-1-943145-35-5

This far-reaching metaphysical outing, an addition to Toon’s early reader comics series, focuses on the microscopic and the immense as well as individuality and collectivity. With abstract, psychedelic art, Crane introduces a white, moonlike orb that grows arms and emerges from the darkness after a page turn: “I am one.” The being next appears—smiling, with its arms outstretched—within the chest of a second, long-limbed figure. As the book moves along, the book shows this being as a part of an interconnected whole that comprises the planet and its fundamental materials (“made of air/ and of cloud/ made of water/ and of earth/ and seed”) until the materials become flesh (“of leaf and fruit/ and bug and bee/ and bone and meat”). As the book zooms into the biological, readers glimpse the inside of a neon pink bird’s stomach and the ventricles of a beating heart, and atoms are rendered as dramatic, kaleidoscopic forms. Finally, as the book zooms back out, long-limbed beings join the first figure, all with similar orbs that grow from their chests, connecting and pooling together: “We are all one.” This is a strange and lovely meditation on wholeness. Ages 3–up. [em](Sept.) [/em]