Something Extraordinary

Clanton (Rex Wrecks It!) uses pencil and muted watercolors to draw a boy who unfurls a litany of wishes: to fly, grow a tail and fangs, speak to animals, and more. “I wish my drawings could come to life,” he says, as a robot with a television-box body and pincer claws emerges from his notebook. “And that I could move things with my mind,” he continues; sure enough, the robot rises off the ground. After wishing for a menagerie of unusual pets, the boy stops, and the animals fade back into drawings, exposed as fantasies. “But mostly... I wish that something would happen. Something real!” Now he spies a tree with a nest of birds in it: “Wow! Hello! Where did all of you come from?” Suddenly, there’s more color in the world, and real creatures to discover. Clanton reveals the charm of recognizing the miraculous in the everyday, yet there’s a hint of melancholy, too. Wishes and imagination have power, he suggests, but they pale beside the experiences that await in the real world. Ages 4–8. Agent: Marietta Zacker, Nancy Gallt Literary Agency. (June)