Tarot of the Gnomes

The Little White Book speaks in character, Alepos explaining that everyone's path leads to Ketra, the perfect world, but not on foot, and that sentence is the Tarot of the Gnomes entire: Antonio Lupatelli, Italy's beloved gnome illustrator, built the deck as an inhabited world with its own geography, philosophy and unhurried gait. Lo Scarabeo published what is really a children's-book universe running a tarot; the gnomes take the arcana at their own pace. Lupatelli's craft is the real thing, decades of fairy-folk illustration behind every mushroom, and the deck's whimsy carries the structural load honestly; the offices are all held, just by small persons with excellent hats. Not on foot, indeed. It suits Lupatelli's admirers across his picture-book fame, whimsy-tolerant readers who want craft under the charm, families sharing a first deck, and collectors of the playful shelf where Luzzati's Children keeps company. The solemn have been warned off gentler decks than this; the gnomes, unbothered, continue toward Ketra.