Fall in Love With The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend

While the story is enchanting, and perfect for reading aloud, it is Santat’s gorgeous illustrations, saturated with color and vibrating with originality, that really bring the book to life. You can easily imagine framing each beautiful page and hanging it on the wall. His depictions of both the fantastical and the realistic are brimming with playful wit. Young readers will be drawn into the story through these stunning images, and adults will want to linger over them as well.
The story opens on an island filled with fantastical creatures, all of whom are waiting to be imagined—and thereby brought into the real world—by that one special child. Beekle, as yet unnamed, is one such creature, but he watches sadly as, one by one, the other strange and colorful inhabitants of the island gradually disappear to the real world to meet their new friends, leaving him alone. Eventually, tired of waiting, brave Beekle decides to take matters into his own chubby little hands. He boards a rickety sailboat and ventures across a deep and frightening sea in search of the child whom he knows will imagine him one day.
When he finally arrives in a harbor of the real world, which is depicted in drab greys and browns, Beekle is charmingly confused by the behavior of the adults he observes there. As he explores this daunting new territory, he wonders innocently why no one stops to hear the music of a street musician, and why everyone on the subway looks “like they needed naptime.”
He is thrilled when he discovers a crowd of children, although his new friend does not seem to be among them; all of these children already have imaginary friends of their own. So Beekle climbs to the top of a tree and looks around. Just as he is beginning to give up hope, he spots Alice, a bespectacled brown haired girl in a jaunty knit cap, and something clicks.
At first, Alice and Beekle are shy and awkward around one another, but before long, during one of the book’s most engaging and delightful sequences, the pair gradually grows comfortable with one another, until eventually they “realized they were perfect together.”
A gentle, satisfying story that encourages children to find the courage to discover their own communities, rather than waiting to be told where they belong, The Adventures of Beekle is a deeply affirming tale, written and illustrated with wisdom and heart.
Have you read The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend?