Allan Say has had a long, storied career as a children’s author and illustrator. He won the 1994 Caldecott for Grandfather’s Journey, about his grandfather’s voyages from Japan to America and back, and wrote about his own childhood in The Ink-Keeper’s Apprentice. Say was born in Japan in 1937, came to the United States at age 16, and eventually settled in Portland, Oregon, in 1999. Tonbo is a contemplative, creative look back on his own life, accompanied by his beautifully luminous oil paintings.
Tonbo follows an old man with a cane taking a morning stroll through the park. A large white bird startles him, reminding him of a toy airplane he once had as a child, which he called “Tonbo,” the Japanese word for dragonfly. Suddenly engulfed in his memories, he chases after the elusive toy, finding himself mysteriously transported to a number of places from his youth, and each person he encounters treats him as if he is getting younger. “What are you looking for, young man?” one woman asks. When a captain calls him “son,” the man laughs, saying, “Excuse me, but I may be older than your father.”
At first, readers see everything from the old man’s perspective. We see the people he encounters and sometimes his shadow. Say’s use of color is magnificent, using mostly muted, dreamlike tones highlighted by intense blocks of color—an orange chimney and mint green roof set against a dark blue ocean; the teal blue of the sky; the green awning and pink outer wall of an ice cream shop. It is at the ice cream shop where the protagonist realizes that the young man he sees in the window is his own reflection. It’s a sophisticated, nuanced progression that may take a few readings for some children to understand, but once they do, it will seem like magic.
Eventually, the protagonist becomes his kindergartener self, back in a garden in Japan, where he finally finds his beloved airplane. Moments later, he’s an old man once more, back with his “old friends—aching hands and knees.” He encounters a group of children on a field trip and leaves them a special gift, in a lovely gesture that brings to mind the circle of life.
Tonbo is a remarkable ode to the interplay between aging and memory, and how the distant past can suddenly come to life again in the blink of an eye. It’s also a wonderful multigenerational conversation starter about how certain memories can live inside us forever.
