A fantastical tale of empathy, Victor and the Giant by Rafael Yockteng (Lion and Mouse, with Jairo Buitrago) imagines what happens when a city-sized giant takes an ill-placed nap. Victor's day begins quietly with "milky hot chocolate" and his mother sprinting out the door to work. Once he is alone, a sudden quake sends Victor to the window; there he discovers a giant sprawled across his ruined city, "having a peaceful nap." The colossal giant, green and hairy, dominates the landscape, his groin modestly veiled by clouds. Victor remains calm. He downs his cocoa, marches into the wreckage, and tugs on a nose hair to wake the slumbering giant.
Rather than cowering, Victor questions the giant: "Why did you eat the whole city?" He patiently explains that a city is for living in, not for snacking on. Yockteng uses humor rooted in exaggeration and absurdity to deliver visual gags (a city recovered via giant vomit) and emotional weight (Victor's tears when he misses his mother). The illustrations play inventively with scale: one dramatic spread shows Victor dwarfed in a ruined landscape, a swirl of tornadoes and the curve of the giant's body engulfing the scene.
Victor is an unforgettable protagonist, small but unshaken, practical, and compassionate. Yockteng's text, smoothly translated from the Spanish by Elisa Amado, strikes a balance between the surreal and the sincere. There's humor in the gross-out moments, but readers will also recognize the quiet bravery it takes to speak truth to power, even when that power has nose hairs the size of tree trunks. --Julie Danielson