Just Imagine

Krystyna J. Higgins is the former book review editor for the Catholic
New Times.

Using the simplest of situations, this book pays tribute to the
limitless possibilities of a child’s imaginative play.

Quin finds a small branch, which is promptly dismissed by her friends
as “just an old stick.” To Quin, however, the stick is the key to a
host of imagined scenarios; she becomes by turn a symphony conductor, an
animal trainer, an adventurer, an artist, even an astronaut. Just an old
stick? On the contrary, smiles Quin: it can be “whatever you
imagine.”

The book’s layout incorporates a satisfying symmetry of structure.
Each two-page spread features a different role for Quin (roles that are,
incidentally, free of gender stereotyping). One page contains the text,
which portrays the situation in an economical sentence or two, and a
small picture of the girl playing with her stick in the “real”
world. The facing page is a much more vivid and detailed full-page
depiction of the fantasy world in which, for example, Quin’s pet cat
is metamorphosed into a fearsome tiger, or where the strokes of her
stick in the sand become a famous painter’s masterpiece. The whole is
neatly framed by the friends’ question on the first and final pages.
“What is it?... Just an old stick” is transformed by the end into
“What’s that?” ... “Whatever you imagine.”

This is an admirably simple, beautifully structured celebration of
child’s play. Highly recommended.