Kirkus Reviews QR Code
IMAGINE A NIGHT by Sarah Thomson

IMAGINE A NIGHT

by Sarah Thomson & illustrated by Rob Gonsalves

Pub Date: June 1st, 2003
ISBN: 0-689-85218-5
Publisher: Atheneum

With a set of moonlit, dreamily mysterious scenes, each of which features an M.C. Escher–like transformation, Gonsalves invites viewers to drift past reality’s familiar borders. Thompson’s captions reflect what’s happening in each surrealistic painting: “Imagine a night when the space between words becomes like the space between trees. . . ,” for instance, accompanies a scene in which floorboards change to shadowy forest behind an adult reading to children. On other spreads church windows, sunflowers, and reflections on water turn into human-like figures, a quilt becomes a patchwork landscape, and a toy train turns big. Beguiling fare for fans of the likes of Chris Van Allsburg’s Mysteries of Harris Burdick (1984), Steve Johnson’s As the City Sleeps (2002), or Quint Buchholz’s subtler Collector of Moments (1999). (Picture book. 6-12)