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We Go to the Park

A Picture Book

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

We Go to the Park is a beautiful, lyrical meditation on going to the park to play—which extends into a reflection on life itself—from Booker Prize-longlisted author Sara Stridsberg, and the inimitable, award-winning illustrator Beatrice Alemagna!

Translated from Swedish by B.J. Woodstein
A Kirkus Best YA Book of 2024
One of Maria Popova's Marginalian Favorites of 2024
Selected for the USBBY Outstanding International Book List, 2025

The park beckons us to leave our daily routines behind and enter its zone of endless possibility. In the park, the usual rules don't apply. In the park, what matters most is the moment, and losing track of time to the timelessness of imagination, invention, observation, and chance. In the park, there are risks, of course, but also the deepest rewards, to be found in the freedom experienced through play that is both embodied and participatory. It is not the lone "I," but the "we" that goes to the park, where chance encounters might suddenly become moments of deep connection—however fleeting—with others, nature, and ourselves.

Originally published in Sweden, this first English–language edition offers an immersive experience of transformation, longing, and transcendence to readers of all ages, while reminding adult readers in particular of the everyday miracle contained in encountering another consciousness.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      February 26, 2024
      Unlike the rest of the world, “where everything is so big there’s no room/ for it inside of us,” the park offers refuge to the child who narrates this uninhibited prose poem. “Anything can happen” at the park, where, sometimes, the world changes. “There might be a creature in a yellow raincoat with wild hair/ who smells like lightning.” On the next spread, Alemagna (Pepper and Me) paints a figure that suggests a bonfire billowing up to the sky next to a jungle gym. Evocative text from Stridsberg (The Summer of Diving) captures the intoxication of meeting a kindred spirit: “The wind is the breath of a dragon./ We let it take us where it will.” The next time the narrator goes to the park, the child isn’t there: “Sometimes it feels as if all of life/ is made up of longing.” Then lightning strikes again. Blots of color and streams of expressive line show children of various skin tones playing on fanciful structures, in meadows and clearings, their emotions—contentment, exasperation, joy—readable in their bodies. The park is a place of liberation and passion, the creators convey, where “the birdlike old ladies on benches exist,/ and the friendly drunks exist,/ as do ice cream cones and cotton candy and rainbows.” Ages 13–up.

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  • English

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