Imagine a city by Elise Hurst

Scholastic, 2014. ISBN 9781742990095.
(Age: 6+) Recommended.Picture book, City, Imagination. Using pen and ink on paper along with a prodigious imagination Hurst gives her readers a city like no other. A few words, arranged into several short stanzas of poetry, say all that is needed. The illustrations reflect the words and add an imaginative city around the woman and the two children visiting the city from the country. Their trip on the train flags the inventive nature of the book, as the next door seat has a rabbit reading the newspaper. Readers will be excited turning the page to find out what else will appear in her playful drawings. And they will not be disappointed. Each page has a myriad of detail to be absorbed, a bridge with a bear as its pylon, hotels of fantastic proportions, an art gallery where the sculptures are reading the paper while a statue of a girl looms into the sky, people flying away pulled by their open umbrellas, fish and tigers walking the streets, an Aladdin's cave of treasure at the museum, a chess playing cat and so on. The pages will entreat and delight, absorb and create thoughtfulness as each picture presented provokes the mind.
I loved it and I'm sure younger readers will too, seeing what is one each page and thinking about what it all means.
Fran Knight