A Wall Street Journal Best Book of 2023Selected for the Wall Street Journal Holiday Gift Books GuideA Kirkus Best Middle Grade Book of 2023A Booklist Editors' Choice: Graphic Novels, 2023A Moonbow Best Children’s Book of 2023A 100 Scope Notes Most Astonishingly Unconventional Children’s Book of 2023Selected for Publishers Weekly's Big Indie Books of Fall feature AND PW’s Holiday Gift Guide!Selected for A Room of One’s Own’s 2023 Holiday CatalogA Daily Bulldog Holiday Book Pick for 2023Shelf Editions Bookshop Book of the Month, January 2024Featured in We Are Teachers’s “Best New Books Coming November 2023 for Kids and Teachers”STARRED reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, and Publishers Weekly “Blexbolex is a singular talent, someone whose work, while often referencing the past, is entirely his own. In The Magicians, his beautiful and strange illustrations—built up digitally through his signature spot-color layers, inspired by traditional screen printing—are combined with a Japanese binding technique that is rarely ever seen in published books. The seemingly simple layout of almost the entire book (one drawing and a few lines of text per page, two per spread) belies a delightfully complicated story about three magicians being pursued by a huntress and her mechanical dragon. But who are the good guys here? Who are the villains? An exploration of the magic and difficulty of childhood, the wonders of the imagination, and the unique properties of books themselves, The Magicians is another utterly surprising gift from Blexbolex. You’ll want to read it again and again.”
Author & illustrator of The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Big Tree

“With an almost monastic commitment to creating images that feel both universal and deeply personal, Blexbolex has swerved in the course of his career from wild, aggressive mark-making to a pure distillation of forms. He has relentlessly followed a muse that has surely been an exhausting alchemical pursuit. The result is this generous story that trusts the reader’s youthful intuition that the solidity we perceive in the modern world is only one layer, and it’s tissue paper thin, like the brilliant, kinetic illustrations themselves. As with all great kids' stories, The Magicians is really about remembering the things we were born knowing and taught to forget. Blexbolex strives to remember the essence of everything.”
Fantagraphics creative director

TRADE REVIEWSA Wall Street Journal Best Children’s Book of 2023! “This cinematic story by the artist Blexbolex, presented in dynamic silkscreen-like images with text translated from the French by Karin Snelson, is like nothing children ages 9 and older will have seen before... The supple feel of the book in your hands, the curious whispering of its paper—The Magicians is sui generis.”
Wall Street Journal

A Booklist Editors’ Choice: Youth Graphic Novels, 2023! “Three magicians escape confinement and are pursued by determined magic-hunters in this enigmatic book about imagination, magic, and who gets to wield it, stunningly illustrated in a brightly colored vintage style.”
Booklist