Elise HurstReseñas

I love the illustrations! Very creative, too.

A beautiful book with wonderful pictures. This would be a story shared with a child of trying new things and meeting new friends. This book would be best one on one to deepen the conversation with a child struggling to meet new friends. Also the artwork would be best thoroughly looked in order to appreciate. The artwork makes the book.½

This book is about a little girl that takes you on a journey through her imagination. The pictures are in black and white, but the artist does a great job of showing you what the little girl is imagining. This is an easy book for young children, it doesn't have a lot of words, but a lot is going on in the pictures.

The illustrations in this book are incredible, so incredible in fact that I don't even think the book has more than fifty words and says more than most novels. A story about imagination and the places you can go kept you wanting to see more about this "city". Turtles that fly and wind that makes you fly it was a great book for all kids, regardless of age. Anyone could appreciate this one.

This book is all about imagination and how it can take you anywhere. Elise Hurst uses beautiful black and white illustrations, along with poetic lines to take her readers to another world. This book would make such a wonderful text for introducing poetry to young readers.

This book took me back to many beloved British fantasy classics as soon as I saw its Victorian setting and black and white drawings.

The magical journey begins on an old-fashioned steam train as two children embark on an imaginative journey to a mysterious city where animals mingle with people and strange buildings tower over the crowds. The wind catches umbrellas, swooping the people and animals on the streets off to the next adventure and they fly through the sky on a floating fish, visit a library where the books come alive, and explore all the wonders of the imaginary world. The story ends with the marvelous world held in a globe and the children fast asleep on the train.

I loved the art but felt that it could easily have stood alone without the accompanying text. The words didn't add anything to the plot or the experience of the book itself and were a distraction from delving into the pictures. I don't generally care for rhyming picture books and thought the words were superfluous at best and saccharine at worst, "The past carries on/and sunlight is breathed in a murmuring song" accompanies pictures of a vaulted hall with giant sculptures, skeletons, flying fish and pterodactyls, and a mix of people from a lady wearing a kimono to a fox reading a brochure.

Verdict: Use this as a wordless book to inspire imagination in older children or for quiet readers to pore over on their own. An additional purchase, but one that will resonate with a number of readers.

ISBN: 9781101934579 ; Published October 2016 by Doubleday; F&G provided by publisher for review