Buitrago and Yockteng (Walk with Me, rev. 5/17; On the Other Side of the Garden, rev. 7/18) turn to full-blown science fiction in this story of a young traveler's journey through outer space to visit his beloved grandmother on a futuristic Earth. The spare first-person text comprises pensive statements ("it's worth it to cross one universe to explore another"), which are regularly divvied up across several pages -- creating meaningful reveals with every page-turn while also foregrounding Yockteng's otherworldly illustrations. Rendered digitally (while still retaining an organic quality), scenes of highly advanced spacecraft, polychromatic galaxies, and alien lifeforms of every size, color, and shape fill each double-page spread. The surprising destination of the boy and the book is reached in an enlightening encounter with what seem to be the cave paintings of southern France. Inspired by the ancient art, as well as a recent gift of his great-great-grandfather's colored pencils, on the way home the child begins to draw what he sees outside the spaceship window -- namely, infinity. An ode to the endless possibilities of art, a celebration of open borders, and a reverence for the contributions of our collective ancestors.

A trip to grandmother's launches light-years beyond the routine sort, as a human child travels from deep space to Earth.The light-skinned, redheaded narrator journeys alone as flight attendants supply snacks to diverse, interspecies passengers. The kid muses, "Sometimes they ask me, ‘Why are you always going to the farthest planet?' "The response comes after the traveler hurtles through the solar system, lands, and levitates up to the platform where a welcoming grandmother waits: "Because it's worth it / to cross one universe / to explore another." Indeed, child and grandmother enter an egg-shaped, clear-domed orb and fly over a teeming savanna and a towering waterfall before disembarking, donning headlamps, and entering a cave. Inside, the pair marvel at a human handprint and ancient paintings of animals including horses, bison, and horned rhinoceroses. Yockteng's skilled, vigorously shaded pictures suggest references to images found in Lascaux and Chauvet Cave in France. As the holiday winds down, grandmother gives the protagonist some colored pencils that had belonged to grandfather generations back. (She appears to chuckle over a nude portrait of her younger self.) The pencils "were good for making marks on paper. She gave me that too." The child draws during the return trip, documenting the visit and sights along the journey home. "Because what I could see was infinity." (This book was reviewed digitally with 9.8-by-19.6-inch double-page spreads viewed at 85% of actual size.)Celebrated collaborators deliver another thoughtful delight, revealing how "making marks" links us across time and space. (Picture book. 5-9)

The pale-skinned child who narrates this story by previous collaborators Buitrago and Yockteng (Two White Rabbits) isn-t fazed by the trans-galactic spaceship trip he takes in these pages; he does it all the time, -always traveling alone.- At his destination planet, which readers will recognize as Earth, a small saucer flies him straight into the arms of his grandmother. Every spread juxtaposes natural and futuristic elements: in one, the boy and grandmother travel in a glass-domed vehicle to a preserve-like area, where she leads him into a cave full of paintings. A print of a human hand and images of animals impress him, and so does the grandmother-s present of a family heirloom, a box of colored pencils--They were my grandfather-s, and before that, his grandfather-s.- Making marks on paper has power that eons can-t diminish; en route home, even the four-eyed passenger in the seat behind the protagonist is riveted by his sketching. Yockteng juggles different styles of artwork with ease-magisterial views of whirling galaxies, pen-and-ink-style drawings of the boy-s time with his grandmother, the cave art itself, and childlike sketches on the new pad all offer scope for the imagination. Ages 4-7. (Oct.)