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After watching the movie Millions (based on the book by Frank Cottrell Boyce) with my family four or five years ago, I knew that I wanted to read his books for kids. Americans may not know this, but Boyce is a well respected screenwriter in the UK and has written four other kid's books (see below) including the soon to be published Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang Flies Again. Millions is thoughtful, suspenseful and sweet, in a good way. The kids in the movie face some tough situations that they have to think and feel their way out of. After reading his newest book, The Unforgotten Coat, I wonder if this is a hallmark of Frank Cottrell Boyce's style? Although a relatively short book, I did not intend to read The Unforgotten Coat from cover to cover when I picked it up. But, an hour or so later as I sat on the couch with tears running down my face, that is exactly what I had done. I often find myself crying at the end of a really good kid's book and I never know if I should mention that in a review or not. Kids don't cry when they read these books and that's fine. Their senses of empathy aren't quite fully operational in the tween and teen years. But, I have decided to reveal my little secret now because when a book touches me deeply enough to make me shed a tear, that tends to be a good indicator of other gratifying qualities that might make the book a valuable read to others, young or old.

The The Unforgotten Coat is meant to look as much as possible like the blue notebook that the narrator, Julie, finds in the pocket of a long forgotten coat.  The first thing we see after the title page is the cover of the notebook with a hand drawn coat on a hanger. The inside of the notebook reveals a polaroid photo of two girls and two boys in their school uniforms, mugging for the camera. Although it is clear in the first paragraph of the book that the Julie reading this notebook and telling the story is now an adult, she quickly slips into the voice of the eleven year old child she was when the picture was taken. That is the beauty and the genius of Boyce's writing. Although this is a short book, he immerses you in the mind and life of his characters so completely that it seems like you have known them for much longer. In the first four pages Julie goes from trying to get a boy to pay attention to her and finessing repeated invitations to spend the afternoon at the house of a girl with a mother who lets her play with make up (she even says, when defending her ability to recall specific things from so long ago, "How do I remember my thoughts so clearly? Because those were the only thoughts I had in the first two terms of Year Six: 1: Mimi, can I come back to your house? 2: Shocky, please notice me.") to becoming a girl with a serious mission. Julie and Mimi spot two kids, "one big and one little, the big one holding the little one's hand - staring through the railings of the playground. The little one was wearing a furry hat, and they had identical coats. Crazy coats - long with fur inside. But any coat would have looked crazy. The sun was beating down. The asphalt in the car park was melting." The girls have a brief exchange with the bigger of the boys and, when they return to the classroom, they learn that he is a new student in their class.

Chingis, the new boy, has brought his brother to class with him. Upon being introduced to the class Chingis commences a very funny, tense exchange with the teacher. Chingis insists that his brother be called Nergui, instead of his real name, which he will not permit the teacher to be say out loud, and be allowed to stay in this class because Chingis is bound to "take care of him. Protect him." Mrs Spendlove agrees to let Nergui spend the day in their class but insists he remove his huge hat. Chingis insists he leave it on, saying that "maybe he will go insane and kill everyone" if it is removed, then asks the class, "When you want your eagle to be calm, what do you do?" Of course no one knows, and Chingis tells them that you cover its eyes with a hood, saying, "When you want the eagle to fly and kill, you take off the hood. My brother is my eagle. With his hood on, he is calm enough. Without his hood, I don't know what he will be like." Upon hearing this Julie thinks,

Year Six. We had been at school for six years, and until that moment, I thought I had probably learned all I would ever need to learn. I knew how to figure out the volume of a cube. I knew who had painted the Sunflowers. I could tell you  the history of Saint Lucia. I knew about lines of the Tudors and lines of symmetry and the importance of eating five portions of fruit a day. But in all that time, I had never had a lesson in eagle-calming. I had never even heard the subject mentioned. I'd no idea that a person might need eagle-calming skills.


And in that moment, I felt my own ignorance spread suddenly out behind me like a pair of wings, and every single thing I didn't know was a feather on those wings. I could feel them tugging at the air, restless to be airborne.

That is such an amazing piece of writing, a spectacular passage, a profound insight. Of course an eleven year old isn't going to think that exact thought at that age, at that time, but that is the beauty of literature and of all art - it can sometimes function as hindsight, helping us to see something in a new way. Without a doubt, at the moment when Julie heard Chingis describing eagle-calming, a powerful feeling swept through her. As an adult, reflecting on this moment, she has the emotional vocabulary to beautifully describe the experience. For her assistance in clearing out the boys who are swarming Chingis and Nergui at recess and trying to learn more about eagle-calming, Julie finds herself appointed their Good Guide. As Chingis explains, "in Mongolia we are nomads. When we come to a new country, we need to find a Good Guide. You will be our Good Guide in this place. Agree?" Of course she agrees, thinking, "No one had ever asked me to be anything before, definitely not anything involving a title. And that is when I stopped thinking about makeup, lips, and Shocky. That was when I started walking around the place thinking, Hi, I'm the Good Guide. And I really did want to be a Good Guide."

From there on The Unforgotten Coat doesn't go in quite the direction you think it might. While Julie guides the brothers in assimilating into their new school and culture, she also immerses herself in the country and culture they left behind. She suggests their class assembly be "All About Mongolia" and looks "stuff up on Wikipedia for the first time." She also puts her past skills to work trying to get an invite into Chingis and Nergui's home but ends up with the brothers at her house. As they become closer, Chingis shows Julie Polaroids he has taken of things from Mongolia like the giant flowers that grow at the desert oases and ovoos, rock mounds that can help you put things right when they are wrong. Chingis also  tells Julie that Nergui is being chased by a demon who make things vanish. This is why he is always hiding in his coat and hat and why the boys walk home from school a different way every day. Julie continues to think that she is learning about Mongolia and Chingis and Nergui's past life until the day that they do not show up for school. Slipping out of the school gate at lunchtime, Julie finds Chingis' notebook filled with Polaroids he has taken and the details of his life story slowly unravel as the pictures, when seen from a new perspective, tell a different tale.

What had me in tears at the end of the book was thinking about how, as children, we see people, places and events one way, but, as adult, we can look back on the scene and see all that we were too naive and  inexperienced to see then. We see the bigger picture, I suppose. What Julie thinks are unique habits that arise from Chingis and Nergui's nomadic culture are really their childish ways of coping with being in the country illegally and the constant threat of exposure and expulsion. The ending of The Unforgotten Coat involves the adult Julie finding Chingis' abandoned coat in the lost and found bin at their old school and using Facebook to track him and his brother down, bringing the story full circle. The Unforgotten Coat really packs an emotional punch when you read Boyce's afterword. He writes of a school visit he made a few years back during which he met a Mongolian girl named Misheel. Her classmates were very proud of her and her customs and treasured her presence at their school - until the day she and her family were taken in the middle of the night by the Immigration Authorities. Misheel was able to get one call through to her teacher and tell her what was happening but they have not heard form her since. She left behind her coat. When Boyce was asked by the reader organisation, a non-profit in the UK that gets kids and adults reading, to write a book for them, he thoughts turned to Misheel.  However, Boyce says that The Unforgotten Coat is not Misheel's story, "it's a made-up story. I didn't want to tell Misheel's story because I didn't want that story to be over." I'll end with the last sentences of Betsy Bird's review of the The Unforgotten Coat, "Few authors have a way of turning you over on your head in the course of reading a children's title. Boyce can. Can and does. This is, without a doubt, one of the best little books I've ever read. A brilliant melding of text and image, it's a wonderful example of what can happen when an author goes for something entirely new. Highly recommended for any kid wanting to read 'a short book' as well as those looking for something a little sophisticated for the 9 - 12 age set.  A true original." Well said, Betsy Bird, and very, very well written Mr Boyce!

With Around the World Matt Phelan brings us yet another remarkable graphic novel that peers into less known corners of history, American history to be exact. The Storm in the Barn  is the magical, sometimes painful story of a family's survival during the Dust Bowl. With Around the World Phelan peers into the lives of three amazing adventurers, Thomas Stevens, Wheelman (1884), Nellie Bly, Girl Reporter (1889) and Joshua Slocum, Mariner (1895). All three circumnavigated the world in the era before airplaines, and in three different ways. 

The first story belongs to Thomas Stevens, a Colorado miner who decides he is going to ride his bicycle across the United States. He keeps a diary of his journey with the intent of turning it into a book. What fascinated me most about these adventurers, among many interesting things, was the fact that all three of them financed their trips around the world with the sale of their writing. I thought that we Americans, in the last ten years or so, invented the concept of the commissioned autobiographical journey ( see: Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible and My Life as an Experiment by AJ Jacobs and Living Oprah: My One-Year Experiment to Walk the Walk with the Queen of Talk by Robyn Okrant) but Phelan has proven me wrong. However, this fact of their travel is a small part of Phelan's book, although it must have consumed much of their time when these adventurers were planning their voyages. As Phelan writes in his author's note, the words "the public journey & he private journey" were his original early guidelines for mapping his story, thinking he would "simply dramatize the events of each of my subject's first-person narratives. The journeys were all extraordinary and fascinating on their own. My job would be primarily one of editing and pacing. Or so I thought." What Phelan finds are places where the "biography and narrative did not quite match up," inspiring him to delve into the "why they did it" of the stories instead of the "what they did." This thoughtfulness and insight is evident in the stories that Phelan chooses to share with his readers. 

Stevens' story is first and it is exhilarating and eye-opening to see this man struggle to maneuver this behemoth of a contraption across America, where bicycling is just gaining popularity. His journey is a mostly joyous one, especially in Europe where the bicycle has already caught on. Phelan ends Stevens' chapter with a quote from his book, Around the World on a Bicycle.

Every once in a while, usually while I am at work, I like to reflect upon how the number of books published for kids has increased exponentially in the thirty or so years since I was a young reader. The books I remember reading and being deeply affected by as a child are so few I can list them on one hand: The Westing Game, From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler, Harriet the Spy, A Wrinkle in Time and The Phantom Tollbooth. This year, the fiftieth birthday of The Phantom Tollbooth is being celebrated with an annotated edition by children's literature historian Leonard S Marcus. 

But first, for those of you who have never read The Phantom Tollbooth, I am going to be lazy and suggest you read Adam Gopnik's article in The New Yorker, October 17, 2011 (thanks to Anne Boyd for calling this article to my attention.) Gopnik provides a great overview of The Phantom Tollbooth and what makes it unique as well as able to stand the test of time, saying that it is "the closest thing American literature has to an 'Alice in Wonderland; of its own." Gopnik goes on to note that, as with any classic of children's literature, "its real subject is education. The distinctive quality of modern civilization, after all, is that children are subjected to year after year of schooling. In the best-loved kids' books, the choice is often between the true education presented in the book. . . and the false education of the world and school. The child being read to (and the adult reading) is persuaded that self-reliance is a better model for learning than slavish obedience." Gopnik points out that what happens to Milo in The Phantom Tollbooth is in fact the reverse. In The Phantom Tollbooth Milo "doesn't educate himself; he gets educated. his epiphany is that math and reading and even spelling are themselves subjects of adventure, if seen from the right angle. The point of The Phantom Tollbooth is not that there's more to life than school; it's that normal school subjects can be wonderful if you don't have to experience them as normal schooling." If you haven't read  The Phantom Tollbooth this might sound incredibly dull and you just might be wondering right now why this book is so beloved. While it is not an easy read and not for every reader, kids (and adults) who do read  The Phantom Tollbooth and get it will tell you it is anything but boring. The world that Juster creates is so vivid and ridiculous yet logical that it is impossible to forget. To this day, I can tell you my favorite line in the book: when, in Dictionopolis, Milo  gets into a horseless carriage and is instructed to sit quietly because the conveyance "goes without saying." Still cracks me up!

Annotating classic children's literature and publishing it in a big, gorgeous hardcover edition with all sorts of extra artwork has become popular in the last few years. Huckleberry Finn, Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Wind in the Willows, Peter Pan, Classic Fairy Tales and Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales have all received the special treatment from WW Norton, as well as a few other classic titles. I have thumbed through a few of these annotated editions and thought I had a pretty good grasp of what it meant to annotate a book until I read Monica Edinger's brief interview with Leonard S Marcus. First off, it is very rare for a book to be annotated while the author and illustrator are still alive. This meant, as Marcus notes, he could go right to Juster and Feiffer for claims of "direct influence" when citing sources for the annotated edition. And what an amazing array of sources of inspiration Marcus accumulates! From Groucho Marx and WC Fields to PT Barnum, Charlotte's Web, Candide,  and synesthesia to Gustave Dore, George Grosz, James Thurber and Will Eisner, the citations are endless. And, being that The Phantom Tollbooth is, in part, a book about words and word play, Marcus was inspired to find out "the derivation of expression like 'short shrift' and 'to make ends meet.' Almost as a bonus, Jules Feiffer and Norton Juster were both living in the neighborhood where I now live - Brooklyn Heights, New York - at the time they collaborated on The Phantom Tollbooth. So I got to do some historical time travel to learn quite a lot about what life in the Heights was like half a century ago."

So, if you (or your kids) have a love of words and wordplay, a fascination for numbers or both,  The Phantom Tollbooth is indeed the book for you. It makes a fabulous read out loud but, as with all the great books out there, it is savored best when read on one's own. The thrill of discovery and the dawn of understanding are incomparable.

For those of you who already know and love (because, to know this book IS to love it) The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chirs Van Allsburg, first published in 1984 and beloved by teachers of all grades as an indispensable collection of creativity-inducing writing prompts, please skip this first paragraph for my review of The Chronicles of Harris Burdick: 14 Amazing Authors Tell the Tales. If you have never heard of The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, then you and your little ones are in for a real treat! The Mysteries of Harris Burdick is a collection fourteen drawings, captions and short story titles and unlike any other picture book you have ever read. This collection of amuse-bouche will get your brain going, your wheels spinning and your creative juices flowing so that you will feel like you've had a full meal, or at least read a traditional thirty-two page picture book that has a beginning, middle and end as well as a plot. The Mysteries of Harris Burdick has none of these and is the better for it. While it is obvious to anyone even remotely familiar with the artwork of Van Allsburg, he nevertheless begins The Mysteries of Harris Burdick with an introduction that only adds to the mysteries within. Van Allsburg tells the reader that he first encountered the drawings of Harris Burdick while visiting Peter Wenders, an old friend who was also retired from the children's book publishing business. Wenders came by the drawings when, some thirty years earlier (we're talking mid-1950s now) a man named Harris Burdick brought samples of his work - fourteen short stories with illustrations - for Mr Wenders to consider for publication. Leaving behind a story title, an illustration and a caption from each of his fourteen stories, Burdick agreed to return with his complete portfolio the next day when Wenders expressed interest in his work. However,  Burdick never returned and Peter Wenders was never able to find out what became of him and his stories. In what I can only think of as a stroke of genius as well as tremendous a gift to the creative lives of generations of children to come, Van Allsburg writes at the end of his introduction,

When I told Peter Wenders how difficult it was to look at the drawings and their captions without imagining a story, he smiled and left the room. He returned with a dust-covered cardboard box. Inside were dozens of stories, all inspired by the Burdick drawings. They'd been written years ago by Wenders' children and their friends. 

I spent the rest of the visit reading these stories. They were remarkable, some bizarre, some funny, some downright scary. In the hope that children will be inspired by them, the Burdick drawings are reproduced here for the first time.

And indeed, the Burdick drawings have inspired hundreds of thousands of children and adults (there is even a website, Who is Harris Burdick? where you can read stories submitted by readers and submit your own, view animated shorts based on the illustrations, listen to songs inspired by the titles of the stories and participate in contests based on the book) to imagine the stories behind the book. In 1993 Stephen King's story inspired by the last illustration in the book, "The House on Maple Street," was included in his book Nightmares & Dreamscapes and can be found as the last story in The Chronicles of Harris Burdick: 14 Amazing Authors Tell the Tales. If you haven't ever seen The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, I'm not going to be the one to show you any of the interior art and diminish even an iota of the magic of it. All I have to say, and this goes for parents and adults without children, buy this book. Now. If you have even the tiniest creative bone in your body, you will thank me and Mr Van Allsburg for this gem. Think of the party games you can play with this book and long car rides that can be lightened by making up stories to go with the pictures. The possibilities are endless, well, as endless as your creativity.

Review of

The Chronicles of Harris Burdick: 

14 Amazing Authors Tell the Tales

Lemony Snicket's introduction put to rest any worries I had about how the publication of stories by various well known authors would affect the way readers new to the book might approach the original story starts in The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. The editors of The Chronicles of Harris Burdick: 14 Amazing Authors Tell the Tales could not have picked a better author to keep the air of mystery and the spark of excitement alive with this new version of an old book. With his flair for enigmas, passion for secrecy and ability to see conspiracies in everything, Lemony Snicket perpetuates the mysteries of Harris Burdick, the man, while also weaving an interesting story around the involvement of the fourteen authors in this book. And, Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) has a true gift for humor which means that the introduction both posits a possible explanation for the disappearance of Burdick and the appearance of these stories while also placing a tongue pretty firmly in cheek and eliciting a few good laughs. Also, I have to pause here to say that the publisher of this book, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, clearly recognizes the importance of The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. With The Chronicles of Harris Burdick: 14 Amazing Authors Tell the Tales they have created a book with gorgeous production values that both honors and enhances the original. A warm sepia tone is used throughout the book, giving it an antique feel and each illustration is printed on extra-thick paper, doing justice (and then some) to the originals. Van Allsburg's original introduction to The Mysteries of Harris Burdick is included at the end of the book, right before the wonderful "About the Authors" section, which reproduces smaller versions of the illustrations to go with the brief biographies.

Except for Stephen King, the other authors...

Oh, ok, I'll list them and all their impressive credentials:  Tabitha King, Jon Scieszka, Sherman Alexie, Gregory Maguire, Cory Doctorow, Jules Feiffer, Linda Sue Park, Walter Dean Myers, Lois Lowry, Kate DiCamillo, MT Anderson, Louis Sachar, Chris Van Allsburg and Stephen King. This list includes (prepare for your jaw to drop now) four Newbery winners, two National Book Award winners, one Michael L Printz award winner, one Academy Award winner (yes!), one former National Children's Laureate, one Caldecott winner (two gold, one silver) and one Caldecott honor winner. Seriously!

...all incorporate the caption somewhere into the story and it is a treat to read along wondering where (and how) it will pop up. My favorite had to be in MT Anderson's story, Just Deserts. The picture of a a woman about to cut into a glowing pumpkin, the caption reading, "She lowered the knife and it grew even brighter" became a grammar lesson for me based on a red herring thrown my way. I know that the word "dessert" is spelled with a double "s" and the other word for a vast, sandy expanse has only one "s," however, that didn't stop me from thinking of dessert and pumpkin pie every time I looked at the picture for "Just Deserts." A customer and I were poring over  The Mysteries of Harris Burdick one day and she insisted the title must be a typo, that Van Allsburg must have meant it to be "desserts." Sure that neither a huge publisher like HMH nor a man like Chris Van Allburg would make a mistake like that, I looked up the phrase on line. There I learned that "deserts" is a plural of "desert," which means "that which one deserves," although the word is rarely used in this way outside of this phrase. To make a long story short (too late...) Anderson works the phrase/word into his story both ways and you just might squeak with delight when you see how. Also, Anderson's story is really darn creepy in a Twilight Zone sort of way, as is Stephen King's.

Most of the story starts in The Mysteries of Harris Burdick have a suspenseful, creepy feel to them and the authors run with this, making this collection of stories good for older kids and not necessarily great bedtime reading for littler ones, unless they like this kind of stuff. The author who best, in my opinion, maintains a true younger reader sensibility with her story is Newbery winner Linda Sue Park. Her story, The Harp, is superb. By the end of the seventeen pages I felt like I had read a whole book. Park's characters, parallel story lines and descriptions are fabulous. Walter Dean Myers' story, Mr Linden's Library, is another of my favorites, although a bit higher on the spooky-scale. There a lot of stories you could tell about a book with vines growing out of it, and in his creation of the character of Mr Linden he takes the story in an enchanting direction. Sherman Alexie's rendition of A Strange Day in July takes the prize for creepy characters and an even creepier interpretation of the caption and still has my mind whirling. While I loved Lois Lowry's story behind a nun floating through a cathedral in a wooden chair immensely, as a bookseller and kid's book lover, and as an adult, Jules Feiffer's story behind Uninvited Guests was the really treat in this bursting literary goodie bag for me. Feiffer's creation of Henry, the aging picture book author and artist who, over time, has begun to live entirely in a world populated by his creations, all of whom are talking and singing animals, is both hilarious and haunting.

The more I read  The Chronicles of Harris Burdick: 14 Amazing Authors Tell the Tales, the more I love it. I have no doubt that, over time, I will come to cherish  The Chronicles of Harris Burdick: 14 Amazing Authors Tell the Tales as much as I do the source of inspiration, The Mysteries of Harris Burdick.

The trailer for The Chronicles of Harris Burdick: 14 Amazing Authors Tell the Tales stars Lemony Snicket (well, his voice and his hands) as well as really great cameos by some of the authors included in the book. Definitely worth a watch. For other great reviews of  The Chronicles of Harris Burdick: 14 Amazing Authors Tell the Tales, check out children's book historian Leonard S Marcus' thoughts in the New York Times Sunday Book Review and Travis over at 100 Scope Notes have some great things to say.

The poems within, which are perfect for little ones but also very tempting for emerging readers with their  brevity of length, simplicity of vocabulary and silly nature - I know because I tricked my emerging reader son who does not like to read into reading a few poems from A Little Bitty Man and Other Poems for the Very Young. Later on, I noticed him reading it to himself. The titular poem, "A Little Bitty Man," is two stanzas long and begins like this:

A little bitty man

took a ride on a snail

down a little bitty road that was shady.

The little bitty man

came to Littlebittyland,

where he married a little bitty lady.

Rasmussen (and his translators) capture the Mother Goose vibe and the sing-song-y tone of her rhymes. You almost want to get out a jump rope or skip around the house while reading these poems. Rasmussen also tunes in to that other kid's poetry great, after Mother Goose, with the poem below, "You Can Pat My Pet." Shel Silverstein would have liked this one, I think.

Whilst visiting various kid's books websites (Educating Alice and Julie Danielson's column for Kirkus Reviews) in August of this year I discovered an early reader series that I had never heard of! Shocked and thrilled, I immediately ordered all four of the books in Tim Egan's Dodsworth series, including the most recent release in hard cover, Dodsworth in Rome. Egan's odd couple quickly became a favorite early reader of mine along with Poppleton by Cynthia Rylant (a multiple Newbery winner) and Mark Teague, Mouse and Mole by Wong Herbert Yee and Dav Pilkey's Dragon series and even James Marshall's fabulous George and Martha books. 

It's here! And it's big! And packed full of great reviews!!! The New York Times Book Review annual holiday feature on Children's Books is really worth perusing this year. Besides featuring many books I have reviewed or am in the process or reading for review right now, there is the Best Illustrated Books of 2011 feature which, though I already mentioned it last week, is worth following the link since the slideshow provided is much better than the glimpse of artwork I gave you. Also, I am really excited about the wealth of interesting picture books, quite a few I have not heard of, that are reviewed. Topics like Picture Books About Moving, Picture Books About Unusual Animals, Variations on Aesop's Fables and Picture Books About the Alphabet all feature new works from some spectacular artists and illustrators. There is even a feature on Books About Grandparents, which includes the new book from Caldecott Honor winner David Ezra Stein (Interrupting Chicken, Love Mouserella.

Also, some great reviews of books that I am reading or about to read. Secrets at Sea by Richard Peck and The Cheshire Cheese Cat: A Dickens of a Tale by Carmen Agra Deedy are discussed in an article titled Mice Twice. A book I've been hearing buzz about amongst bloggers, Bigger Than a Bread Box by Laurel Snyder. And (drumroll, please) children's book historian Leonard S Marcus (who also just annotated the 50th Anniversary Edition of Norton Juster and Jules Feiffer's masterpiece, The Phantom Tollbooth) reviews the very exciting, long awaited book that I am one story away from finishing, The Chronicles of Harris Burdick, the all-star collection of authors adding their interpretations to my favorite Chris Van Allsburg book from 1984, The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. If you have never heard of or seen this remarkable book, then I suggest you run out and buy it RIGHT NOW. Or, maybe you could just read Choose Your Own Adventure, Marcus's review of the book. Or, better yet, visit Who Is Harris Burdick, the website dedicated to the book and readers' stories to go with the pictures. The Mysteries of Harris Burdick is beautifully unique and endlessly inspiring of creative thinking. Because of this, it has been a classroom staple for years. Apparently, however, this book isn't as widely known as I had assumed. Several my literate and occasionally literary co-workers had NEVER HEARD OF IT! And, while I did have a customer (a teacher) express excitement over The Chronicles of Harris Burdick, I'm not sure how well the book is selling in my store, despite the fact that it is (and will be through Christmas) on a 20% off sale table at Barnes & Noble....