City Under the City - Dan Yaccarino

Author: Dan Yaccarino

Genre: Picture Book, Dystopian.

Rating: 4 stars.

A picture book that deals with a dystopian future! Quite a unique topic for this genre.

Bix lives with her family in a city where the “Eyes” help everyone. The citizens can’t do anything without their approval. Bix however hates being “helped”, so when Bix discovers an underground city by accident while following a rat, she is stunned to discover that there was life before the Eyes. She also finds a magical place filled with reading material she has never seen before: A library with books. With the knowledge gained from these, Bix realises that she has to change the way things are going on in her own city.

I have never read a picture book that felt more like a graphic novel. The writing style is meant for kids but this book offers so much for adults as well. The pages are visually stunning! There are subtle clues in the artwork that feel almost Orwellian. The illustrations are simplistic yet impactful. Children will love brave little Bix and her friend, the rat.

One of the main themes in the narrative is the importance of reading. This works even better as the story establishes very clearly how forced reading material never works; reading has to be by choice and with content of the reader’s choice. Perhaps an important point for schools and curricula advisors to understand.

We never know who the Eyes are or how they came into existence. But the whole idea felt allegorical in the way it points a subtle finger at the manipulative activities of administrations and corporations in the way they control the lives of the general public and censor what they consider inappropriate. The content also serves as a metaphor for the smart screen and social media addicted life that we are living. If everything we watch/do is suggested by the infinite scroll feed and we’ve lost the idea of what it means to choose, we don’t think for ourselves but are taking the lazy way out, whether by choice or by compulsion.

The above is, of course, too deep for little readers to understand. And this is a book meant for them after all; the official target age group is ages 4-8. But while they might only understand the content at face value, adults will certainly gain a lot more if thy read between the lines while reading this aloud to their kiddos.

In short, it is a quirky dystopian picture book that highlights the power of reading and the importance of thinking for yourself but not just about yourself. Will work better if read with adult guidance as the sub-textual context is more difficult to grasp than the textual content.

My thanks to mineditionUS, Astra Publishing House and Edelweiss+ for the DRC of “City Under the City”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.