The Numberlys by William Joyce (review)

A long time ago, there were no letters or colors, only numbers keeping things very orderly. Five friends in this drab but steampunky world, however, finally get sick of dinners of 00267 (“which was thick and gray and gloopy”) and, after much experimentation with breaking down and reassembling numerals, are able to invent the alphabet, which also bursts forth into color. There’s a certain whimsy to Joyce’s overstatement of the problems of uniformity (“There weren’t any . . . jellybeans or pizza”), but the link between letters and the vibrant and diverse world isn’t made very clear, and overwrought handling of the concept draws the set-up out too long. As with Joyce’s The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, this concept began with a mobile app, and the interactivity of that medium has carried over into the book’s design, with spreads switching often between vertical and horizontal and several wordless images showing off the creativity of the newly designed glyphs in alphabetic order. However, that frequent flipping does make the physical book cumbersome to read. The most compelling aspect here is the illustrations, which pay clear homage to Lang’s Metropolis in their fuzzy black-and-white, larger-than-life, and gear-driven cityscapes. These contrast effectively with the mad-scientist wordsmiths, who are a veritable crew of rounded robotic-looking folks with white faces and big, expressive eyes. While there are a number of picture books that give the perils of uniformity a stronger treatment—Jeffers’ The Hueys in the New Sweater (BCCB 7/12), for example—Joyce’s en vogue aesthetic and incorporation of numbers and letters will likely mean this sees some serious circulation.