The Red Book; The Museum Trip; The Secret Box

The Red Book by Barbara Lehman
2005 Caldecott Honor Book

Also by the same author---
The Museum Trip
The Secret Box


I am pretty excited to be introduced to this author who I was previously unfamiliar with. I looked up The Red Book because it was a Caldecott Honor book, and when I saw it was a wordless picture book, I got everything on the shelf that she had written! My kids like wordless picture books. Jabu (age 10) likes graphic novels and comic books and these are akin to that somehow. And Makayla  (age 6) is just learning to read, so to be able to "read" a book entirely on her own is satisfying to her.

Some wordless picture books are designed with pre-readers, that is VERY YOUNG children in mind. But this author/illustrator is more in the ilk of David  Weisner (Flostsom, and Tuesday, among others). She creates, through pictures alone, COMPLEX, intriguing story lines that are engaging for all ages, including adults!

Her illustration style is very different from David Weisner. His pictures are very fine and detailed. Her pictures are warm and simple. But The Red Book really does remind me of Flotsom.

All three of these books I read this evening by Barbara Lehman involve the characters entering into pictures or pages and thus entering other worlds. So, there is a surreal, fantastical element.

In The Red Book a girl finds a book and sees a boy finding a book and looking at HER in the book, while she looks at HIM in her book. It's all a little twisted and hard to wrap your mind around ---- in a good way!

The Musuem Trip shows a boy getting lost on an art museum field trip, entering a little door to a small room where there are pictures of mazes in a glass case. He runs onto the paper, and works the mazes,  running each one's route successfully, into the center and out again.

In The Secret Box three children find a small collection of treasures left by a child long ago. They travel into the world of the clues left in the box. . . some ticket stubs, a postcard, etc.

All very cool stuff. Much cooler than I'm able to describe here. I like this author A LOT. And am so very happy to have discovered her as a result of this project!