This is such a fantastic book – brilliant for opening children up to a raft of their own storytelling experiences.  Its premise: a man called Harris Burdick delivers a set of pictures he’s created to go alongside some stories he’s written.  He’ll return the next day with the stories, he says. Only he doesn’t, and the pictures (plus captions) are all that remains.

So the book is a delightful collection of mysterious and very open images with some words to go alongside.  My personal favourites are the first one:

Archie Smith, Boy Wonder
A tiny voice asked, “Is he the one?”
The image is of a sleeping boy surrounded by glowing lights.

There are fourteen images in total, some bizarre (a massive ocean liner stuck in a Venetian canal), some eerie (a magical landscape), all beautifully drawn and with just enough text to prompt imaginations without stifling them.

And, the plot thickens. There is also a follow-up, The Chronicles of Harris Burdick, a collection of authors’ responses to the original images.