In the time of then and once, of yet and still and will be, a boy lived deep in the canyons of the city. He was a cowboy of the streets and alleys, a garbage-can roper, a chain-fence rider.” So begins this poetic and mysterious story about a homeless kid who wants to be a cowboy. One day the whinny of a real horse wakes him. He climbs on its back and the horse takes flight. They soar over the city, and other horses join them: rocking horses snapped from their rockers, bronze and marble statues, plaster horses torn from carousels, painted horses ripped from museum canvases. The young cowboy rides his herd across the sky, whooping with joy.

By focusing on the fantasy experience rather than the boy’s homelessness, this intriguing book portrays the imagination as a redeeming force. The fact that this cowboy’s horses are torn from spaces of comfort and power suggests a radical reversal of power structures, as the poor boy’s emotional needs are met by a magic that raids the halls of the well-off. Kapas’s surreal illustrations add mythic dimensions: the boy’s hair matches the horse’s golden mane, and the city that rises behind the garbage dump is a composite of the cities of the world. The final picture of a girl startled from sleep as horses fly from her patterned sheets provides a shock of wonder.

This is a strange and wonderful book whose minimalist plot and luminous pictures weave a web of magical possibilities. You may not understand it, but you’ll want to read it again and again.