Paralights
Aiden Woosol Lee
North Street Book Prize 2024 (view all the winners)
Honorable Mention, Children's Picture Book
Critique by Jendi Reiter
Funny and full of personality, the picture book Paralights was written and illustrated by Aiden Woosol Lee when he was only a sixth-grader. In 2019, this young creator already knew more about dynamic illustration and typo-free, age-appropriate storytelling than many of our adult entrants!
Our first-round judge, Annie Mydla, said: "I was truly engrossed in this tale about a ghost who gets upset because kids are spending so much time with devices that they are no longer scared of him. The story has good forward movement." Annie and I were both fans of the scene where the little boy traps the ghost in his backpack.
Paralights uses gentle humor and kid-level problem-solving to handle screen-time addiction without adult preachiness. We identify with the lonely ghost who is acting out because no one notices his hauntings! Finally, a little boy actually takes the time to listen to his anger, and the ghost discovers he'd rather have a playmate than a prank victim. The skillful resolution reminded me of one-eyed Mike in Monsters Inc. discovering that their factory can be powered by kids' laughter instead of scares.
I thought the boy's name, "Ainrofilac", would be awkward for beginning readers, because it's neither a normal first name nor a common sequence of English-language syllables. Obviously to an adult, it's "California" backwards, but what purpose does that serve in the story?
The title Paralights (misprinted as Paralight on the spine) is presumably a mash-up of "paranormal" and "lights", perhaps also a pun on "paralyze" because the ghost brings our tech-addicted lives to a halt by shorting out the grid. Again, I'm not sure if this wordplay would be too subtle for the under-eight set.
The oversized hardcover was sturdy, with bright and crisp color illustrations. Attention to detail extended to the endpapers, which were lemon-yellow with a repeated pattern of hand-drawn, emoji-like faces. The book had a video-game aesthetic, a mix of extremely handmade fan art and modern cartoon character styles, that seemed like it would speak to the current generation of kids.
