Connie Came to Play

When Connie comes to play in Robert's house Robert is endlessly possessive of his train, rope, bricks, trumpet, rocking horse and diving set. Connie's way of dealing with this is immediately to imagine herself into another setting where she is riding a real train or horse, diving into a real deep-sea or building a tower out of real bricks. This intriguingly designed picture book alternates reality and fantasy worlds that are a delight to share with early readers. The expressions on the children's faces and the dreamlike escapism of the fantasy double spreads offer lots of scope for parent and child chat about what belongs to whom. Furthermore, the power of the imagination to take young and old alike into other landscapes is at the golden heart of this book. Composers often talk about the space between the notes; this collaboration of author and illustrator is worth reading both for its economy of narrative and the words left off the page!