The Future Book, by current National Ambassador for Young People's Literature Mac Barnett and illustrated by Shawn Harris, Barnett's collaborator on The First Cat in Space series, is a nonsensical, surreal, and silly picture book where noses are called "mushrooms" and cows are "mooing life-forms."
At first, the future seems relatively straightforward, albeit peculiar: "the sun is called the moon," "morning is called night," and vice versa. Bananas are called apples... but apples? A page turn reveals, "We don't have apples in the future."
Barnett builds momentum as, one by one, new names for common phrases and customs are revealed, each more absurd than the last: a supermarket is called a "Bolly bolly hoo hoo" and "the lowest number is one bazillion." Intrigue and excitement multiply when new facts, like lots of people being named "Charlie Cheese Face," have no logical explanation: "There's an interesting reason why, but we don't have time for that story." Eventually the seemingly disparate items and phrases merge into a sidesplitting short story ("Then we gently placed fish on each other's heads"). The book's simple sentences and fourth wall-breaking narration enhance the farce.
Harris's art builds on the text as conventional images gradually give way to recurring outlandish ones, like a punk with triangular sunglasses and a rainbow-hued pompadour, and various people amicably sporting green fish on their heads. His confident, sometimes overlapping brushstrokes and playful use of color imbue the future with joy and humor (one page simply debuts the color "blorange"). Fans of The Book that Almost Rhymed by Omar Abed should add The Future Book to story time rotation. --Kieran Slattery, freelance reviewer, teacher, co-creator of Gender Inclusive Classrooms