Drawn Onward

Reviewing an adventure; how hard can it be?

Okay, let’s go! Here’s a review of Daniel Nayeri’s latest picture book, Drawn Onward. You’d better take a seat, because I could go on about this forever (though I won’t).

I first read this book shortly after it came out late last year, and I immediately realized that this was something special.

The entire book is told in palindrome form. Not a word-for-word palindrome, but rather a phrase-by-phrase palindrome. This is pretty uncommon for a picture book, but I thought that it actually worked pretty well. It would have been nice to have the text more evenly spaced, since sometimes you forgot what the previous words were, but it still made sense. Oh, and even the sound effects are palindromes! Daniel Nayeri really thought of everything.

The book narrates the story of a young boy grieving the death of his mother, and I’ll be honest, it made me cry (fine, this happens a lot, but not very often with picture books). It was touching and and inspiring, following Tolkien’s writings about fairy tales and the eucatastrophe, and could definitely lead to similar works in the future.

Now, to get to the illustrations, as done by Matt Rockefeller… I think that, honestly, this is the only way to illustrate a palindrome. Done in a whimsical style reminiscent of Ben Hatke or The Wingfeather Saga, Rockefeller demonstrates an excellent knowledge of light and color that add to the story’s overall arc. Light plays a central role in the plot of the story, and Rockefeller fills the pages with so many many different types of light, so many colors, that you can practically feel the shift in the story as it reaches its conclusion.

If I’m going to be completely honest, every time I open this book, I find something new that astounds me. For example, the last time, I realized that the arrangement of the panels on the page are also a palindrome, becoming mirror images of each other half-way through the book! And the little illustrations within the frames also add to the story; dried out weeds become lush plants, war becomes peace, and so much more.

All in all, I would say that this is the picture book of 2024, and that if you want to read a beautiful, heartfelt picture book, or if you’re interested in creative approaches to storytelling, I would definitely suggest that you take a look.

Enjoy!

If you want to find more books by Daniel Nayeri, go to his website here.

If you want to find more illustrations by Matt Rockefeller go to his website here.

To find or purchase Drawn Onward, go to HarperCollinsPublishers here.