Stålenhag's art is typically of scenes from the Swedish countryside, peppered with everything from strange buildings to robots and even dinosaurs and they often involve one or more kids interacting with the unusual element of the depiction.
The story presented around this book is that the artist has painted these scenes as if they were from his own childhood growing up around the large scientific facility called the Loop. Many of the pieces are accompanied by a few paragraphs, often recounting some childhood memory of the artist and one or more of his friends as they encountered the focal point of the art piece (i.e. a particular robot, or a building). While there are a few unaccompanied pieces of art, they still feel like they belong in the world Stålenhag has, literally, painted for the readers.
Tales from the Loop does a great job of combining artwork and a few bits of exposition to establish a world that, in many ways, isn't far from our own, but because of some fundamental changes, has a lot more of the fantastical as a part of these kids' everyday lives.
Even if Tales from the Loop was only an art book, then it would be worth putting on the coffee table of anyone interested in sci-fi artwork, but with the added narrative, Tales from the Loop is an even more enjoyable package.
