The Chronicles of Harris Burdick

I think any fan of children's books would be familiar with the works of Chris Van Allsburg. After all, he's written Jumanji, The Garden of Abdul Gasazi, The Polar Express and many others. One of which was a beguiling collection of strange pictures with tantalizing captions called The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. In that book you were left to wonder what the stories were surrounding these unconnected pictures. Now 14 authors are trying their hand at it and the result is this handsome book. I decided to read it aloud to the kids. (I needed a book and this was handy.) Some nights I read one story, most others I could read two before lights-out. It's a pretty solid collection, there were only a couple stories I didn't really care for. One that the kids particularly liked was the third one, written by Sherman Alexie. It featured two naughty siblings and my kids giggled like mad as I read it. The last story was one by Stephen King and it's the longest of the bunch. Kids were riveted and had to tell Mama all about it afterwards. Fun stuff.