They Threw Us Away by Daniel Kraus (review)

When Buddy wakes up in a landfill, he's confused—towers of trash are not a place where he, a brand new huggable Furrington bear, should be. He finds he's not the only inexplicably discarded stuffie, and after freeing four other bears from their boxes, he realizes that the only way they can fulfill their purpose—loving a child and entering the Forever Sleep—is to set off from the garbage dump and make their way to the city. The journey is fraught with dangers: Horace, mint green, friendly but timid, gets carried off by one of the landfill's predatory gulls; Sugar, pink, sweet, and clueless, tears her eyes out so as not to see a dead rat they must pass by in a sewer pipe; the aptly named yellow bear Sunny and somber, silver-furred Reginald eventually abandon Buddy on the edge of a dirty highway. Krause pulls on the darkest elements of the "toys come alive" trope and twists them with his signature horror style, trading any sense of innocence for menace—even the bears' goal, the love of a child, brings about what essentially seems like death. Despite the terrors (and there are many, including a shears-wielding Manager bent on their destruction and a giant Furrington made of other bear body parts, à la Frankenstein's monster), there is a profound story here of friendship and bonds in the face of danger as the four bears come to care for each other. Cai's black and white art adds further creepiness, with figures cast in slightly skewed shadow or eerie, delicately sketched lines. Fans of Toy Story or The Velveteen Rabbit might be aghast, but readers who knew there was always something a little off about their playthings will appreciate this uniquely horrific take.