Soonchild by Russell Hoban

SOONCHILD, authored by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Alexis Deacon, is classified in my library as YA (young adult fiction), but here is that mysterious thing, a book to read to a child until she can read it for herself as well as a book that child can understand both differently and completely each time she rereads it at a new stage of her life– a book for all ages.

John the shaman/shamed man has gotten lax, but when the world (wearing the face of the daughter in his wife’s womb) needs him, John enlists Raven and journeys to find the World Songs his daughter demands. And what a rollicking, flawed travelogue the reader gets to witness! Russell Hoban  is a master of “the strangeness and silence underneath everything,” which, in this tale, he names Ukpika. The illustrations of Alexis Deacon are as genius as Hoban’s tale itself. Not only is SOONCHILD a roaringly magnificent read, but the jump John must make to find the World Songs happens to be the very jump each of us alive at this time on the planet is being asked to make.

I’m truly sorry that Russell Hoban’s mystical gladness has left this plane (1925-2011), but SOONCHILD seems  a fitting last imagining from such a uniquely magical and hilariously comedic author.