The Imaginaries: Little Scraps of Larger Stories

by Emily Winfield Martin

Overview

Best-selling author/illustrator of The Wonderful Things You Will Be, Emily Winfield Martin, shares her "Imaginaries": paintings from over the last ten years, captioned with one enigmatic sentence, designed to inspire.

From mermaids and giant flowers to magical robes and mysterious characters, this full-color collection of old and new art from Emily Winfield Martin will inspire the artist and writer in you! Each glorious image is given a mysterious or magical one-line caption—the beginning of a story, or maybe the middle—you imagine the rest.

The captions are hand-written on vintage scraps of paper, envelopes, postcards and more. Akin to the Chris van Allsburg book The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, The Imaginairies is destined to become a cult classic in its own right.

The book is unjacketed with foil and a matte finish on the cover; a treasure to keep and display and pore over for years.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780553511031
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	02/04/2020
Pages:	80
Sales rank:	189,749
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

#1 New York Times bestseller Emily Winfield Martin is the author and illustrator of Dream Animals, Day Dreamers, The Wonderful Things You Will Be, The Littlest Family's Big Day, Oddfellow's Orphanage, and Snow and Rose. Emily is known to wander in the woods whenever she can. She lives ilives in Portland, Oregon in a little house with a hobbit door and lots of bookshelves. You can find her at emilywinfieldmartin.com.

Editorial Reviews

11/11/2019

“I found them, or maybe they found me,” Martin (Snow & Rose) writes in an introductory note about the fragments, which she says she came upon in surprising places. In this album, pages feature enigmatic handwritten notes on creamy envelopes and other scraps of paper opposite exquisitely painted animals and doll-like women and children in fanciful dress, expressions of doubt on their faces. A note across from a woman dressed in a silk robe reads, “Her/ heart was the/ kind that beat/ like a bird’s/ wings.” In some paintings, animals—a lion, an ibis, a bat—pose with human figures, offering silent companionship. In others, humans wear masks (“She always wanted/ to be/ a bear”). Romantic seascapes carry silent menace as gigantic sea creatures threaten three-masted schooners: “Where/ they were going,/ there were no maps,” one note says ominously. Throughout, the human characters appear poised and self-conscious, as if awaiting further instructions. Only a few—a girl who confronts a sea monster, another who rides a bat at night—seem to have plans of their own. It’s a stirring sheaf of variations on the theme of luxurious eccentricity. Ages 8–12. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

Martin has truly created something unique and inspiring for storytellers and explorers, young and old.” —School Library Journal, starred review

“Romantic is the vibe…. Whimsical writing prompts in a vintage style for your inner Wes Anderson.” —Kirkus Reviews

"A stirring sheaf of variations on the theme of luxurious eccentricity."  —Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

★ 01/01/2020

PreS-Gr 2—In this unique book, full-page ethereal illustrations are combined with phrases or single sentences to spark the curiosity and creative minds of readers. There is no real plot, nor is there supposed to be one. Martin has essentially created her Fantasia of books, with paintings of imaginative scenes being paired with a short sentence written on old paper. The text can be a bit difficult to read sometimes, especially for younger readers who may not know cursive, but the vocabulary is simple and the sentences are short. Besides, readers do not even need to have words in order to create stories from Martin's various illustrations. Each one of the acrylic or gouache designs speaks for itself, with readers filling in the stories with their own ideas and maybe with the help of the provided phrases. There is a sense of enchantment about these designs that encapsulate numerous emotions and worlds that are so far and yet so close to our hearts. Scenes of the sea, friends, parties, the unknown; Martin gives readers a look into these imaginary worlds and instead of telling readers what is happening, she asks them to decide instead. VERDICT Martin has truly created something unique and inspiring for storytellers and explorers, young and old.—Margaret Kennelly, iSchool at Urbana-Champaign, IL

School Library Journal

2019-10-23
Addressed in an opening note to "the one who finds this," this collection of what Martin calls story scraps invites readers to stretch their creativity.

Martin presents a "misfit" series of narrative fragments, describing them as stories that don't yet exist. Each spread features either a full-bleed or one-page illustration, rendered in delicate gouache and acrylics and accompanied by an intentionally cryptic, hand-lettered note, as if jotted on a scrap of paper. ("She hadn't believed in the night garden.") Most of the illustrations feature elegant portraits, many of tall, slender, doe-eyed, pale girls and women (including a mermaid) in nature. Refreshingly, two of the nonwhite humans have very dark skin instead of the lighter, ambiguous skin color used to signify diversity in so many picture books today. Occasionally, massive and mysterious sea monsters appear; after all, "the sea gives up its secrets slowly." In both artistic style and tone, romantic is the vibe: Martin writes that she found one story fragment "in the roots of an English rose." The tone momentarily shifts toward surreal when she paints a young girl at a birthday party with friends who have human bodies but large animal heads (a cat, a bear, etc.), but the more wistful tone dominates.

Whimsical writing prompts in a vintage style for your inner Wes Anderson. (Picture book. 8-15)

Kirkus Reviews

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