  | City under the city Author: Yaccarino, Dan | |
| Price: $23.28 | ||
Summary:
Bix lives with her family in a city where people rarely talk or play together, and no longer read books. Instead, they stare at small portable screens, monitored by giant eyeballs. Running from an Eye, she discovers another world: the City Under the City. There, she befriends a rat who leads her to a library and its treasure trove of books and knowledge.
Reviews:
Kirkus Reviews (-) (08/01/22)
Booklist (11/01/22)
The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (+) (00/11/22)
The Hornbook (+) (00/01/23)
Full Text Reviews:
Booklist - 11/01/2022 Bix and her family live in a futuristic world where The Eyes, yellow floating eyeballs with mechanical claws, watch everything and help everyone, from waking folks in their pods each morning to choosing the books schoolchildren read on their screens all day. But Bix wants to be independent. One day she follows a tiny, cute creature down a hole and tumbles deep underground where a city hides beneath her modern city. In the buried city, she discovers a library and begins reading books, which teach her how humans lived before The Eyes. There, she hatches a plan to spread this newfound knowledge and defeat The Eyes, but she’ll need the help of everyone above ground. The moral messaging is clear and strong (it’s essentially The Matrix meets Pleasantville, but for second graders), and the plot, for all its impressive complexities, is told in very simple text that will appeal to emergent readers. Yaccarino’s highly recognizable digital-art style, with its lavender-skinned humans and minimalist color blocking, is perfectly sparse and mechanical for this quasi-disturbing dystopian adventure. - Copyright 2022 Booklist.
Booklist - 11/01/2022 Bix and her family live in a futuristic world where The Eyes, yellow floating eyeballs with mechanical claws, watch everything and help everyone, from waking folks in their pods each morning to choosing the books schoolchildren read on their screens all day. But Bix wants to be independent. One day she follows a tiny, cute creature down a hole and tumbles deep underground where a city hides beneath her modern city. In the buried city, she discovers a library and begins reading books, which teach her how humans lived before The Eyes. There, she hatches a plan to spread this newfound knowledge and defeat The Eyes, but she’ll need the help of everyone above ground. The moral messaging is clear and strong (it’s essentially The Matrix meets Pleasantville, but for second graders), and the plot, for all its impressive complexities, is told in very simple text that will appeal to emergent readers. Yaccarino’s highly recognizable digital-art style, with its lavender-skinned humans and minimalist color blocking, is perfectly sparse and mechanical for this quasi-disturbing dystopian adventure. - Copyright 2022 Booklist.
