Pigeons!: A Fable for Our Times

French cartoonist and picture book illustrator Chalvin delivers a dark and witty parable of how authoritarians seize control. When a power-hungry crow named Korbak descends upon the pigeon populace, he clocks their passivity (“It really is a miracle the species has survived”) and uses manipulation and threats to establish dominance. Early on, he brutally kills one hapless member of the flock who dares to contradict him, and the rest quickly fall in line. An egalitarian-minded gull tries to intervene, but the pigeons show little capacity or even desire to think for themselves. She eventually manages to talk them into holding an election and runs against Korbak. Unfortunately, the pigeons prefer Korbak’s paternalistic sloganeering (“Vote for Tranquility”) over the gull’s mission statements promising “radical change.” “It’ll be total chaos,” Korbak says of the gull’s efforts at establishing democracy. “They don’t want us to ask them what they want!” Chalvin’s elegant black-and-white charcoal-style drawings perfectly match the minimalist story line, while the inherent humor of his cartoony anthropomorphic characters and quippy dialogue helps this bleak allegory go down easily. The result is just pointed enough to draw blood. (Dec.)