quality literature

So I'm up early to work some more on my program but can't get all these great books I discovered last Friday at this course out of my head...

I'll introduce you to one author/illustrator - Chris van Allsburg. I think his more well known books would be The Polar Express and Jumanji.

Two other treasures which were shown to us was 'The Sweetest Fig' and 'The Mysteries of Harris Burdick'. The books seem to be more suitable for older primary and even high school aged children but I think they could even be for younger children.

My own interest was sparked by 'Harris Burdick' in particular. It isn't so much as a story but a set of illustrations with a title and then one line to accompany it. They are brilliant - fantastic for visual literacy, promoting imagination and creativeness, discussion of all the possibilities and even engaging children to write their own story after being inspired from that one illustration and line.

From van Allsburg's website...

When Chris Van Allsburg was invited to the home of Peter Wenders, he discovered fourteen drawings that were, like pieces of a picture puzzle, clues to larger pictures.
But the puzzles, the mysteries, presented by these drawings, are not what we are used to. They are not solved for us, as the final pages of a book or a film's last reel. The solutions to these mysteries lie in a place at once closer to hand, yet far more remote. They lie in our imagination.

For those who have thought of themselves as unimaginative, this book will prove the opposite. Even the most reluctant imagination, when confronted by these drawings, will not be able to resist solving the mysteries of Harris Burdick.

Introduction

I first saw the drawings in this book a year ago, in the home of a man named Peter Wenders. Though Mr. Wenders is retired now, he once worked for a children’s book publisher, choosing the stories and pictures that would be turned into books.
Thirty years ago a man called at Peter Wenders’s office, introducing himself as Harris Burdick. Mr. Burdick explained that he had written fourteen stories and had drawn many pictures for each one. He’d brought with him just one drawing from each story, to see if Mr. Wenders liked his work.

Peter Wenders was fascinated by the drawings. He told Burdick he would like to read the stories that went with them as soon as possible. The artist agreed to bring the stories the next morning. He left the fourteen drawings with Wenders. But he did not return the next day. Or the day after that. Harris Burdick was never heard from again. Over the years, Wenders tried to find out who Burdick was and what had happened to him, but he discovered nothing. To this day Harris Burdick remains a complete mystery.

His disappearance is not the only mystery left behind. What were the stories that went with these drawings? There are some clues. Burdick had written a title and caption for each picture. When I told Peter Wenders how difficult it was to look at the drawings and their captions without imagining a story, he smiled and left the room. He returned with a dust-covered cardboard box. Inside were dozens of stories, all inspired by the Burdick drawings. They’d been written years ago by Wenders’s children and their friends.

I spent the rest of my visit reading these stories. They were remarkable, some bizarre, some funny, some downright scary. In the hope that other children will be inspired by them, the Burdick drawings are reproduced here for the first time.

Doesn't it just make you tingle with excitement at the endless opportunities for our imaginations?

I'm looking forward to putting an order in with the Book Depository very soon.