Drawn "with a deft hand that could convey the speed of hurdling space projectiles," Guillaume Perreault's The Postman from Space is the jocular story of Bob, a spacial postman who is really quite ordinary. Every morning he showers, puts on his uniform, travels the same way to work and enjoys his nice-and-easy schedule on his nice-and-easy delivery route. This morning, though, there has been a change and Bob is about to have a very unusual, not even remotely nice-and-easy day--instead of his standard "simple and orderly" route, Bob delivers to a giant during a very muddy rainstorm, an elderly woman who needs to clean up the mess in her asteroid belt and a planet occupied entirely by dogs. Hungry dogs.
Perreault (Sleep, Sheep!) takes everyday adult activities--gassing up the car, making coffee, going to work--and places them in an extraordinary context, giving readers a world that is surprising, unusual and very funny. The text, translated from the original French by Françoise Bui, directly conveys the mundanity of Bob's life while the illustrations show readers the silly: Bob showering in a glass cube, or taking orders from his mustachioed, one-eyed, tentacled boss. Perreault makes excellent use of blank space to keep his illustrations uncluttered, his panels drawn in a thin, uneven black line with many pages free of panels altogether. He makes the art all the more dynamic by visually differentiating Bob's new delivery stops with individual color palettes. The Postman from Space is an imaginative graphic novel perfect for both solo and shared reading experiences. --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness