My Adventure Island

Subtitled ‘… where wild things happen’, My Adventure Island doffs its cap to Sendak’s classic picture book. The island is constructed through the imagination of a small boy who sees it a place where he can do exactly as he likes: here he can eat chocolate cake and marshmallow trifle without being sick; as a pirate, a cowboy, a wizard, a knight he’s brave and strong; he doesn’t have to wash and there is no bedtime. And if his clothes get dirty ‘How else would you know that they’d ever been worn?’ The rhyming text and lively, sketchy illustrations are well-matched in keeping the escapades of ‘our hero’ moving along, and changing moods are signalled by corresponding changes in palette.

Eventually tired, like Max, he finds that to be where someone loves him best of all is indeed preferable to unbridled freedom. But this time we are shown, not told, as he runs down stairs – presumably from his bedroom island – into the arms of a waiting adult, perhaps mum. And surely his supper will still be hot!