September 2006
THE RED BOOK
By Barbara Lehman
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company, 32 pages
On a cold winter morning, a little girl, on her way to school, finds a red book almost entirely buried in the snow. The book is rescued and taken to class. Inside, the girl finds a map of a tropical island. At the same time, a little boy, strolling on a beach on a tropical island, finds a red book buried in the sand. He opens it to a picture of a city filled with sky-scrapers. There are other pictures of buildings and of windows and of a little girl reading a book. The picture she is looking at is of a boy, sitting on a beach, reading a book with a red cover. For each child, the book is a magic doorway into the other's world - just as all books allow readers to journey to places unknown and exciting. Lehmann tells her story without words but her bright gouache illustrations are all that she needs to show that lives can be transformed through stories and the power of imagination.
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