Between the lines by Lindsay Ward

Ward, the creator of a number of picture books including my personal favorite Please bring balloons, returns in a story of community and hope.

The unnamed narrator, a white boy, opens the story in a small green space in a city of reds and blues, standing atop a blue slide with a Black girl, with the words “I was just a boy when the colors were swept from our street.” Hurrying grownups rush past the boy on the sidewalk and a torrential rainstorm leaves the cityscape a black and white outline with a jagged tear through the ground, the sidewalk bricks crumbling, and the neighborhood cut in two.

The two friends are separated and while the boy dreams of color, he wanders alone in the neighborhood, seeing his friend only from far away. When he stops dreaming of colors, the boy decides to take action and begins cleaning up the broken debris around the split. Others in the neighborhood join him, including his friend, and they all work together until rain comes - bringing with it the colors. The end pages show a bustling, happy community, full of color and life, with children painting a rainbow crosswalk.

I am divided on whether the story is useful or not. Some aspects seem to hint at specific current events - is the neighborhood split over racial tensions? Does it illustrate the loss of diversity in the loss of color and finishing picture of a rainbow? Is it showing a pandemic quarantine? The vagueness of the message could therefore be useful to address any current issue dividing a community. However, the framing of the white boy as the central protagonist reinforces stereotypes and the message, that all people need to heal rifts is to work together, is overly simplistic. It’s especially confusing, if the book is read as being about the pandemic, that the real issues of health and safety are ignored and none of people who were unable to quarantine are shown as active during the time the neighborhood is without color or life.

Verdict: The art is lovely and the book could be useful as a supplemental resource in addressing current issues, but I think overall the message is too vague and simplified to really be useful. Purchase for the art, especially where teachers are looking for inspirational books about community.

ISBN: 9781542026901; Published October by Two Lions; Review copy provided by publisher