Not a traditional story book, which might frustrate some. A little girl borrows a book of stories from her teacher, but the words fall out on her way home. She loves the beautiful pictures but is discouraged until a voice whispers that she can make up her own stories to go with them. As she studies the pictures again (we see her in the corner of each spread and can see that the pictures she's looking at are the same ones we're seeing), she creates a title and a sentence or two to begin. Each sentence trails off...leaving an opportunity for the reader/child being read to to continue the tale. The girl falls asleep imagining stories and is late for school...but when a kind fox returns the lost words, the girl agrees to help her get reach some grapes before going on to tell the teacher all the stories she's invented. On the last page is a very short retelling of Aesop's "The Fox and the Grapes" (the origin of the fox in our book), in which the clever fox, instead of giving up and grumbling, imagines a different story for herself.

Beautifully illustrated (because I am nothing if not shallow about my picture books) and with plenty of excellent opportunities for children to stretch their imaginations! ( )

Extraordinary images and a very imaginative story to go with it. Beautiful, mysterious, requires the reader to tell the story. ( )

An illustrated fable about imagination and stories. The pretty art is collage like and idiosyncratic but I wasn't totally charmed and I found the ubiquity of crowns odd and distracting. ( )

A delightful story with wonderful illustrations about a young girl and her teacher's favorite book. This one is headed straight to my grandchildren! ( )

This is yet another stellar book with images that pull you in to the beauty on each page.
In this story, in school, a little girl spies a lovely book high up on a shelf. When asked what is in the book, the teacher tells her it is magical. As she walks home, the words in the book fly in the air and land in the net of a fox.

As the girl opens the book at home, she and finds a quiet place to read. And, as she opens page after page there are beautiful images with each page more beautiful than the last. But, there are NO words.

As the girl continued to enjoy the images, she heard the wind outside her bedroom. The wind blows, and carefully as she listens there is a small sounding whisper. And, it is the whisper that tells her the beauty of words can be found inside her and her imaginings will take her to magical places.

As she listens to the whisper, she is able to listen to the story she makes to match the pictures.

The blue bear surrounded by bees visits on the first day of spring, then the whispering voice and she again notes a rabbit and a fox on each page as page, one, then another can be filled with the words of her own story, of adventure and the hundred mile journey begins with the fox, an elephant and a lovely lion.

And so, with one word followed by another and another, an entire magical story is imagined. As the morning arrives, and as she walks to school, a fox hands her a bag of words that the fox collected at the beginning of the story.

The photos, the story, all of it is sheer magic. But, most importantly, this is a beautiful book of the power of imaging and the use of words. ( )