Review by Booklist Review
Ages 5-8. A stirring fantasy in which a boy who loves sailing finds a ship that can fly through the air.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A new portfolio edition offers the artwork from Chris Van Allsburg's The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, originally published in 1984, in loose oversized sheets. The enigmatic black-and-white drawings are each accompanied by a title and brief caption: for example, a picture of a nun placidly sitting in a chair floating in a cathedral is labeled "THE SEVEN CHAIRS: The fifth one ended up in France." The portfolio also includes a 15th drawing, discovered under circumstances as mysterious as the original set. A new Internet site, set to launch on October 28, will encourage the use of the pictures to seed creative writing assignments. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Ostensibly, a man named Harris Burdick left these 14 eerie, enigmatically-captioned pictures--e.g., ""ARCHIE SMITH, GRADE ONE A tiny voice asked, 'Is he the one?'""--at a publisher's, to be found by Van Allsburg: some adult make-believe that kids may very much take to. And they're surely likely to take up the invitation to imagine the stories that ""went with"" the illustrations. ""Archie Smith, Grade One"" is asleep in bed--sailboat above headboard, bat leaning on window ledge--as mysterious blobs of light come in through the open window. There are shades of Victorian hugger-muggery: ""MR. LINDEN'S LIBRARY He had warned her about the book. Now it was too late""--accompanies a girlish figure on whose limp arm rests a book open to reveal a deadly weed. There are some pure apparitions, too--like the monstrous ocean liner heading into a Venetian canal. It's actually a good use of Van Allsburg's penchant for just such somber pictorial mystification, very much in the spirit of old-time tantalizers as well. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
