Robin, a nonbinary kid who lives with their uncle Miles, sits alone in the basement, bored and lonely, as they do every night. Suddenly, a \u201ctall figure in a thundery coat\u201d enters: the Cat-Headed Wanderer. The dapper, anthropomorphic feline whisks Robin to a magical purple treehouse filled with mystical characters from Robin\u2019s dreams. Everyone has come together to celebrate Robin\u2019s birthday. Elated, the child feels \u201clike their body is made of feathers or flowers all opening at once.\u201d When Robin announces their plans to stay here forever, the Cat-Headed Wanderer interjects: \u201cActually, this is just for tonight. But we exist in the real world. There are so many of us\u2026You just have to find us.\u201d Abruptly, the party ends, and Robin returns home; soon after, Uncle Miles walks in with a birthday cake. Robin falls asleep that night, happy and hopeful for \u201cfriends just waiting to be found.\u201d Ball\u2019s swirling comic images set an enchanting tone but do little to make up for the awkward flow of the story. And while it\u2019s heartening to see a nonbinary child centered in a picture book, Oet\u2019s sudden transitions and piecemeal revelations are likely to leave readers confused rather than uplifted. Midway through the party, for instance, Robin is presented with old photos of them with their mother and father, but it\u2019s never clear where their parents are now or why Robin is so lonely. Human characters are tan-skinned.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Robin, a nonbinary kid who lives with their uncle Miles, sits alone in the basement, bored and lonely, as they do every night. Suddenly, a \u201ctall figure in a thundery coat\u201d enters: the Cat-Headed Wanderer. The dapper, anthropomorphic feline whisks Robin to a magical purple treehouse filled with mystical characters from Robin\u2019s dreams. Everyone has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}