A young girl comes home after her last day of school with terrible news. She has to read an entire book during the school holidays.
Just one? For the entire school holidays? That is terrible news.
She hates books.
Blasphemy!
Her sister takes her to the library,
Ooh, the mother ship!
where she’s introduced to the book that will change her life.
Okay, so what you’re telling me is the sister is the hero of this story.
I love books. I love books about books. I love books about loving books.
The words in this one are wonderful, sure, but it’s the illustrations I keep going back to. Our soon to be kindred spirit is absolutely adorable!
Seeing our reluctant reader glued to the page is what joy is made of. Witnessing the moment she transforms into one of us is pure magic.
Prior to their visit to the library, the colours are muted. You can see more vivid colours beginning to escape the pages in the library and when the girl begins to read.
Once her imagination sparks, though, that’s when the colours come to life.
I appreciated the sneaky inclusion of the author’s other books on the classroom bookshelf. Be on the lookout, as I always am, for Mary Poppins. You may also find a Lost polar bear.
You don’t need a spell to convince me of the life changing magic of books. My hope for this book is that it’s the first adventure for tomorrow’s bookworms.
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, an imprint of The Quarto Group, for the opportunity to read this picture book.
Once Upon a Blurb
From the award-winning creator of Flooded and Lost comes a magical story about the joy of discovering a connection with books for the very first time.
This brightly illustrated adventure story is perfect for kids who claim to hate reading, as the enchanting narrative opens their eyes to a fantasy world created by words on a page.
In this spellbinding story, we meet a little girl excited for the end of term. No more school! However, she’s given the very unreasonable task of reading a whole book over the holidays. A whole book? but she HATES books. Luckily, her sister takes her to the library and says she has just the thing.
Slowly, the little girl is drawn into a world of adventure inside her own imagination, for the very first time. Even the greyscale world starts to fill with colour as she is carried away in the story. A little fennec fox leads her to meet fairytale witches and creatures as they find ingredients to cast a special spell at the end of her book.
The little girl is dismayed to learn that this spell seemingly hasn’t changed a thing. However, the little fox points out that she is completely transformed: discovering the power of her imagination has changed her forever.
Schizanthus Nerd 