Books like In a Blue Room
By Jim Averbeck
For the child who negotiates bedtime with a list of very specific demands, this is the book that takes those demands completely seriously. Quiet, dreamy, and slow-breathing — the visual equivalent of a lullaby.
A boy falls asleep holding a book and drifts into a wordless dream world where chess pieces come alive, a dragon appears, and landscapes shift from canyons into cities before his eyes.
One ordinary Tuesday evening, a pond full of frogs suddenly rises into the air on their lily pads and drifts off to explore the sleeping town nearby.
A collection of poems imagines a curious inn run by poet William Blake, where dragons, angels, and a Man in the Moon all check in for the night.
A little girl who wants a pony more than anything draws a dappled mare she names Silver, then imagines riding her through a magical countryside and even among the stars.
A young ballet student listens to music from Swan Lake in her dance class and is magically transported into the story, where she meets Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer.
A young boy sets off on a moonlit walk armed with only an oversize purple crayon, drawing his own path through woods, seas, and dragons before finding his way safely back to bed.
A young man buys a violin for one silver piece, and the moment he plays it, fish take to the air, cows start dancing, and apple trees sprout cake and ice cream.
A boy drifts off to sleep and dreams he's driving a night train through the countryside, stopping again and again to let endangered animals climb aboard.
A gentle bedtime rhyme imagines which dream animal might carry a sleepy child off tonight — a bear to bake pastries, a fox into a magical forest, mermaids for tea.
A young boy watches an airplane cross the sky and imagines climbing aboard, flying past trains and boats, all the way to the moon and back to his mother's arms.
A little boy builds a snowman on a wintry day, and that night it comes alive, leading him into a magical adventure that includes a flight high above the sleeping countryside.
A journey through a string of impossible moments — a swing that soars past treetops, a bike path made of falling leaves, balloons that turn a gray sky postcard-perfect — where the everyday world quietly becomes something else entirely.
