Oasis
JieJie and her little brother DiDi live in a desert wasteland outside of a bustling metropolis known as Oasis City. Their mother works 
long, grueling hours in order to get her children admitted to the city. JieJie does her best to keep her little brother in good spirits and acts as sister, best friend, and mother. But this is no job for a child. Scavenging for water, enduring sandstorms, and trying to make nutritious meals from dry packets weigh heavily on JieJie. Things change when the children come across a scrapped AI robot in a junkyard. This new addition to the family is able to do pretty much everything their original mother can and the children begin to develop a familial love for her. Despite the story’s dark premise, it ends on a very hopeful note.
I do want to draw attention (pun intended) to the beautiful illustrations in this book. The character designs are minimal and delicate – the people in this story have a cartoonish, child-friendly design that is almost evocative of dolls or toys and I think the whole vibe endears them to the reader. The harsh environments and settings are realistically rendered, and Goujing makes excellent use of color and highlight to bring out the despair and hope in the story.
Oasis has a lot of potential for dark storytelling, but ultimately leaves these plot threads behind to favor a saccharine ending. I feel that there was a rich vein to mine about AI, environmentalism, the nature of work in capitalist societies (a very haunting connection is drawn between the children’s mother and the AI robot), and how all of those things have the potential to just slam together and what sort of disasters it might create.
But really, this book is not necessarily trying to speak to me personally. As the author states, the book was inspired by the “left-behind children” of China—children who live in rural areas while their parents seek work in cities. A happy ending is what we want to give these children who are so far away from their parents, and it’s easy to see that desire reflected in the story. The publisher describes it as “filled with equal parts hope and suspense,” and I am inclined to agree.
Oasis
By Guojing
Macmillan, 2025
ISBN: 9781250818386
Company Age Rating: 8-12
NFNT Age Recommendation: Middle Grade (7-11)
Creator Representation: Chinese,
Character Representation: Chinese,
