Look, a book! by Libby Gleeson and Freya Blackwood

Little Hare, 2011 ISBN 978 1 921541 80 3.
(Ages 4+) Picture book. An older woman returning from a foraging or shopping trip, drops a book as she enters her house yard, surrounded by a ramshackle fence. Two children pick up the book and scrambling up onto the old outhouse building, are transported by the words, flying over the rooftops on their piece of galvansied iron. They return the book to the older woman and reading it with her, are transported again, flying on an old plastic drink bottle, over the houses and the rubbish left around.
The illustrations will sweep the reader up into the imaginative flight taken by the author, flying over the cityscape, watching a landscape at once surreal yet containing the things the children have seen in the woman's yard. With the blurb, You never know where a book can take you, this is a book to share with small and large groups, as imagination takes hold encouraging the readers to talk about books they have read and the places they have gone with books.
The whole book has a times past feel to it, the illustrations show an older woman living in a house which seems as it if has stepped out of the Depression era, and this is underlined by the outhouse and stick washing line. Yet other things bring the story into the present. The rubbish contains things children of today would recognise, the shopping trolley, custard container and plastic chair the woman sits on to read to the children, all tell of a modern age.
Appropriately 2012 is the National year of Reading in Australia, designed to promote reading and books throughout the country and this along with several other books, will be read and reread as teachers promote reading with their classes.
Fran Knight