The Books

Stephen and the Beetle

by Jorge Lujan
Illustrated by Chiara Carrer

One Potato Review

A boy, alone with his imagination and a beetle he finds in his garden, reflexively prepares to smash it with his shoe, before pausing to consider where this apparently harmless fellow earthling – one of trillions, after all – might actually be headed. He studies, is transported: the beetle, now a magnificent triceratops from the Cretaceous Period, seems all of a sudden to remember something – but what exactly? “If I drop my shoe, thought Stephen, the day will go on just the same, except for one small thing,” is all he’s prepared to concede – but it’s the artwork here, by Carrer, that speaks volumes about our side-by-side puniness, boy and beetle taking turns in a spotlight that sometimes fills up the whole page, and sometimes resembles a faraway target on Google Maps.

 

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