(++++) BACK AND FORTH AND FORTH AND BACK

Otto: A Palindrama. By Jon Agee. Dial. $10.99.

     Eschewing the ease of “Madam, I’m Adam” and “Able was I ere I saw Elba” – the two palindromes most likely to be familiar to fans of the form – Jon Agee has created a truly magnificent 142-page graphic novel told entirely in palindromic form.

     Well, not entirely entirely. This is, after all, a graphic novel, and since narrative palindromes are somewhat limited by their very nature – they must fit the story arc as well as reading the same backward and forward – a great deal of Otto is done entirely in drawings. Which happen to be wonderful, so the wordless panels are almost as much fun as the word-bedecked ones.

     Almost. The real charm of this book, not only for the younger readers for whom it is intended but also, most definitely, for adults, is the amazing variety of clever wordplay appearing on page after page, along with the whimsical and gently surrealistic settings through which Agee takes his modest young adventuring hero.

     Not that Otto wants an adventure; he happens upon one when gazing into the wonton soup he is having for dinner with his parents (“Nosh, son!”). A gaze into the swirling broth transports Otto – in his mind, and quite delightfully – to a beach where all sorts of odd and amazing things happen. As an airplane flies by promoting Abba and a sign warns, “Step on No Pets,” Otto glances through binoculars at a bird upon a boat and asks Mom, “Emus sail, I assume?” Shortly thereafter, a beachgoing, human-size rodent (“Was it a rat I saw?”) attracts the attention of Otto’s pup, Pip, and it is Otto’s Pip pursuit that leads our hero to all manner of weird, wild, wonderful places and people. As he wanders, he gently refuses a food offer from a sari-wearing woman: “‘Wanna potato pan?’ ‘Naw.’” But he happily quenches his thirst with red-ice cider. Then he helps Mr. Alarm get Dr. Awkward off some railroad tracks before a speeding train going “Toot!” rushes past. Later, Otto interacts with a woman who observes specific types of cars going by: “A Toyota” – several of them, in fact, but “Sad, no Hondas.”

     Still seeking Pip, Otto takes a ride to Grubsburg in a pickup truck driven by a pleasant woman: “Sir, I’m Iris.” And in an urban setting, the palindromic pace picks up, with one truck saying “Walsh’s Irish Slaw” and another promoting “Stahl Hats,” while billboards proclaim “Regal Lager” and “Lion Rock Corn Oil” and a street preacher holds up a sign reading, “Do Geese See God?” Otto sees some remarkable people here, each introduced by Iris and delightfully illustrated in accordance with palindromic naming: “Remarkable Melba Kramer,” “Sir Ron Norris,” “Evil Cara Clive,” “Odd Ike Kiddo,” “Taco Cat,” and more. Otto leaves the truck when he thinks he sees Pip, but it turns out to be a different dog, so further urban exploration is necessary – at a bookstore where titles in the window include “ZONE by Ben Oz,” and at a newsstand featuring “Game Mag.” There is also an unpleasant encounter on the street with a meat-carrying bully: “I’m Al, a slob. My symbol: Salami!” Palindromic graffiti adorn walls, and city painters create a dot pattern on buildings, with which Otto helps – but his dot is runny, so removal is necessary and “Todd erases a red dot.” A fresh-produce market proclaims “We dye no honeydew” as Otto continues on his way into a “Mueseum” – the one palindromic error in the book, although it is quite forgivable because it allows descriptions of art including “a dog, a pan, a pagoda” and “a car, a man, a maraca.” This is clearly a museum of modern art, of which not everyone approves: “‘Gustav Klimt milk vats?’ ‘Ug.’”

     Otto eventually opens “Door by Lily Brood” and finds himself in a maze, then in a wooded outdoor area where a well-dressed owl goes “Gag!” because, as a nearby robotic bird explains, “Mr. Owl ate my metal worm.” Wandering into a nearby cemetery, Otto encounters an elaborate memorial to “Noon,” and a well-dressed nearby woman explains, “No one made killer apparel like Dame Noon.” Walking past numerous odd-but-apt tombstones (“Del was awled” with a picture of a sharp tool, for example, and “So, Ida, adios!”), Otto eventually comes to a beach, where a seagull goes “kwawk” and a duck goes “quouq” (which really is just as good as “quack,” if not better). Several adventures later – one in a rowboat, one in a cave – Otto is back at the beach where his journey began, and where his parents are calling for him. And then he is safely at home, where soup is still on the table, but he has higher priorities: “‘Wonton, Otto!’ ‘Not now!’” And the book ends with Otto playing outdoors with Pip, as a nearby bird, seen earlier during the dream adventure, utters a concluding “peep!”

     Otto: A Palindrama is above all a book filled with wordplay, but it is also a remarkably good, cogent, thoroughly enjoyable graphic novel, replete with strange and memorable characters and a series of mundane-but-not-quite-usual happenings that meld beautifully with the illustrative format. Agee gives credit at the back of the book to various people who contributed some of the memorable palindromes, but of course he created many of them himself, and deserves credit for the whole concept and for producing a work that is equal parts silliness and subtlety. Hopefully it will inspire readers young and old to a new appreciation of the amusement potential of English. Maybe some will even imagine their own additions to the book – for example, making up a scene in which the hero would react to being shown some slime by a professorial type: “‘Goo, Otto!’ ‘Oog!’”