Imagine a City

In a picture book originally published in Australia in 2014, Hurst invites readers into an ornate black-and-white cityscape. The meandering journey begins with the words “Imagine a train to take you away,” and a scene of two children and their mother boarding an old-fashioned locomotive. The three enjoy an elaborate tea service en route, undistracted by the white rabbit reading a newspaper and the penguin in the overhead bin. They disembark in an urban space of soaring skyscrapers, cozy apartment buildings, and picturesque architectural follies amid expansive gardens. Humans and animals mingle on the streets, pteranodons wheel overhead, and footbridges connect tall buildings. In this “world without edges,” graceful branches extend from museum paintings, umbrellas become sails in playful gusts of wind, and massive flying carp provide public transportation (“buses are fish/ and the fish fly the sky”). Hurst’s sweeping pen-and-ink illustrations suggest a combination of midtown Manhattan and Hogwarts. If the overall effect is something of a setting without a story, Hurst’s engrossing mashups of the urban and the fantastical present no shortage of fuel for readers’ own imaginations. Ages 3–7. (Oct.)