“The current will take everything if we allow it.” 

So counsels Iode, the energetic salmon, as he swims against the slipstream. In Jérémie Moreau’s Alyte, the title character is a young, nervous tadpole, the sole survivor of a dangerous journey to water. Newly emerged, the world greets Alyte with endless, overwhelming currents, until Iode takes him under its fin. 

Moreau’s art style makes our amphibian protagonist effortlessly endearing–who could resist the glossy-eyed smile of a baby toad as it makes its first friend? With tiny dotted eyes, gooey edges, and a wide, awed mouth, Alyte is delightfully animated and expressive. 

It’s through Alyte’s naive lens and a sort of Finding Nemo charm that we get glimpses into the many worldviews of the animal kingdom. As Iode swims them through the wide, wet world, he describes the furry paws that scrape the riverbed as angry demigods, the webbed feet pedalling the water’s surface as “liminal feathers.” Predators are more uneasy, knowing the only law is the survival of the fittest. But it seems that the smallest creatures have the strongest sense of ownership: a lounge of lizards bask in the warm glow of “the best drug in the universe,” a dung beetle rolls dirt up into a new planet for orbit. As Alyte grips Iode’s scales with his newly emerged legs, the pair leap into the sky and Iode declares: “We’re demigods! We are the storm, the current is us!”

The world of Alyte is dreamy revelry in colour, breathing lush life into every frame. Mossy green, nectar orange, lilac, mint, and blue-grey dusks soften the days where our little tadpole is tossed from fang to claw to talon, grappling with the fragility of life. Forests filled with loopy boughs, gradient colour washes, and wide landscapes reminiscent of Japanese woodblock prints–think Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa, for instance. But its scenery is never empty for long. From rocky peaks to the bubbly amoeba, Alyte’s animal philosophy permeates Moreau’s comfortable style, showcasing a world not of hard lines and stiff edges, but one where all parts are interconnected. 

After a harrowing encounter with a screech owl, Axon, the oldest tree in the forest, shows Alyte just how deep this connection goes. He counsels Alyte to listen to the planet’s vibration, and suddenly the weave of nature unfolds before us in a new way: the death of a sprout feeds a deer; the death of the deer feeds a wolf. “Silva sees the big picture,” says Axon. “Clouds, rivers, fertile soil, insects, animals… We are Silva. […] Silva builds the world. A world where the Soleil flows.” Indeed, translators Nick Frost and Catherine Ostiguy kept many of the story’s original French names, which here lends a deeper sense of mystery to Axon’s worldview. 

While the original French publisher, Éditions 2042, positioned Alyte as a graphic novel for general audiences, its English release with Milky Way Picture Books shelves it among a slate of beautifully illustrated children’s books. True enough, this story does both, in the vein of classics like The Little Prince or Charlotte’s Web. Alyte is a tale that changes the scale of our thinking, that brings the big, overwhelming world into the hands of kinder creatures to help us face it, tame it, and be amazed by it.

Soon, Axon, Alyte, and the whole of Silva must gather to dismantle their greatest enemy yet: Lethalyte, a two-lane speedway that sections the forest, separating families and creatures from precious resources. As predator and prey band together to dismantle the road, Alyte summons a spirit of survival and resilience, the same that animated Iode the salmon when they first met. A refusal to be swept up by the current, built on community and resilience. A beautiful fable for our difficult days.mRb