Reviews 

“This Was Our Pact”

By | August 19th, 2019
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

When you’re a kid, life is almost entirely boundaries, of one sort or another. Whether those boundaries are set by your parents, by the world around you, or even by yourself. I remember the anxiety and wonder at what existed outside those boundaries. It could have been anything. Something completely outside my current understanding of existence, something that was entirely unlike the world that I currently lived in. Of course, in my case, when I did work up the courage to wander off a little farther than my mom wanted me too, mostly what I ended up finding was more of the same. In “This Was Our Pact” by Ryan Andrews, the world outside those boundaries is just as amazing as I had hoped it might be.

Written and Illustrated by Ryan Andrews
It’s the night of the annual Autumn Equinox Festival, when the town gathers to float paper lanterns down the river. Legend has it that after drifting out of sight, they’ll soar off to the Milky Way and turn into brilliant stars, but could that actually be true? This year, Ben and his classmates are determined to find out where those lanterns really go, and to ensure success in their mission, they’ve made a pact with two simple rules: No one turns for home. No one looks back.

The plan is to follow the river on their bikes for as long as it takes to learn the truth, but it isn’t long before the pact is broken by all except for Ben, and (much to Ben’s disappointment) Nathaniel, the one kid who just doesn’t seem to fit in.

Together, Nathaniel and Ben will travel farther than anyone has ever gone, down a winding road full of magic, wonder, and unexpected friendship*.

*And a talking bear.

“This Was Our Pact” follows two young boys, who ride their bikes after a group of lanterns that, in a tradition of their town, have been dropped into the river. Every year, a group of young boys would ride their bikes out to the edge of town, to the bridge their parents don’t allow them to cross and watch as the lanterns disappear into the distance. This year, though, things will be different. The boys have made a pact, one to see where these lanterns eventually end up, and to not turn back before they do. Unfortunately, out of the five or so boys that started following the lanterns, only two actually try to see their pact to its conclusion.

“This Was Our Pact” is able to perfectly capture so many things about being a kid that’s young enough not to know much about the world, but old enough to wander off on their own. The art, the colors, the story, all come together to create the feeling of the world as a child, both positively and negatively.

This is a beautiful book. The art throughout “This Was Our Pact” is cartoonish, with all the characters having very distinct designs matched by their personalities. Andrews’ colors all have a texture to them, as do his sound effects, giving the cartoonish art a certain kind of grounding. Andrews’ art is able to capture a childlike view of the world. Not in the way one usually thinks of childlike, which is to say dumbed down and unimportant, but instead a view of the world that is accurate to how children see things. In the art, that gives everything a cartoonish style. The characters are extremely expressive. When they’re happy, they’re overjoyed, and when they’re sad, they’re devastated. It’s able to capture the extremes of being a child, without ever discounting their feelings as real.

This same understanding of childhood continues on passed the art style and into the story itself. While this is a story of adventure and fantastic events, the characters always feel so real. This starts with the way they behave toward one another. “This Was Our Pact” does not shy away from the ways that kids can be cruel to each other. The way that one character spends most of the story treating another is both viscerally real in a way that reminded me both of moments where other kids didn’t want to spend time with me, and times where I wanted to be away from others.

But it’s not just the cruelty that feels real. In fact, it’s the way that the characters are able to come together, to move passed the one characters hang ups and problems, that is probably the most satisfying part of the book.

And that might be the best thing about “This Was Our Pact.” Underneath the adventure and the excitement of the book, there is a well of empathy. For the main characters in the book, but for the side characters as well. This a book where, as an adult, I can see the many facets of childhood being portrayed through the many different characters. And, if I were a child reading this, I can only assume it would be easy to connect to one character or another, or possibly both. This is a book that is both exciting and touching in equal measure, and it is worth reading for anyone that is, or was at some point a child.


Reed Hinckley-Barnes

Despite his name and degree in English, Reed never actually figured out how to read. He has been faking it for the better part of twenty years, and is now too embarrassed to ask for help. Find him on Twitter

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