Imagine
Gr. 3-5. This book's title reads like a command: Leave reality behind and enjoy these pages of optical wonderments. Children will need to bring their own stories to Messenger's spectacles--minutely detailed, colored-pencil-and-watercolor images of fantastical landscapes, faces, and animals. The brief text suggests ways to interact with the images, such as visualizing a slightly altered familiar world (a teapot without a spout) or the completely fantastical: "Imagine a land where giants can be found," read the words below a lush, medieval landscape in which giants' faces are hidden among castles and hills. Cleverly constructed gatefolds, wheels, and flaps allow children to create gloriously unexpected animals and humans by matching up bodies and heads, and small, inset visual puzzles offer more interactive fun. The number of movable, tearable paper parts will make this a challenge for library circulation, but teachers and children alike will delight in the beautiful, accomplished images and the open invitation to drift between rules of logic and the exhilarating freedom of make-believe.Gillian EngbergCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved