The Chronicles of Harris Burdick

Starred review from July 25, 2011
Van Allsburg's The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, published in 1984, paired foreboding sentences with cryptic, highly detailed charcoal-pencil illustrations. With mostly stimulating, sometimes conventional results, seasoned authors (and Van Allsburg himself) play the game children have for decades, incorporating the sentences and visual cues into new stories (and one old one, Stephen King's "The House on Maple Street") that expand on the original's enigmas. The liveliest entries pick up on Van Allsburg's haunting ambiguity: Jon Scieszka ends with a cliffhanger, Gregory Maguire weaves a complex tale of magic, and M.T. Anderson concocts a chilling Halloween offering. For a lakeside picture of two children, Sherman Alexie writes a sinister narrative about exasperating twins who pretend to have a third sibling, until their creepy prank backfires. In quieter examples, Walter Dean Myers describes an dying man's library and a girl's love of books, while Kate DiCamillo finds a wartime story of longing in an image of wallpaper missing one bird ("It all began when someone left the window open"). This star-studded exercise in creative writing tests the wits of favorite authors and shows readers how even the big shots hone their craft. Ages 10â14.

August 1, 2011

Gr 5-9-Van Allsburg's The Mysteries of Harris Burdick (Houghton, 1984) has taken on a life of its own in the years since its original publication. The mysterious pictures, accompanied only by a title and a caption, have captivated many young readers to create their own stories. Chronicles presents stories to go with the images by a who's who of writers for children and young adults-and adults if you count Stephen King. His "The House on Maple Street" is actually one of the strongest selections, reprinted here from one of his short story collections in 1993. In this tale, children maneuver their cruel stepfather into the titular house just prior to the perfect lift off. It's fully realized with deftly drawn characters. Also memorable is Lois Lowry's "The Seven Chairs," about a nun who learns that she can "rise," along with seven special chairs. M. T. Anderson's "Just Desert" (the picture with the glowing pumpkin) is an especially brilliant take about a boy who just may be the only person on Earth with everything being created just for him. Van Allsburg's "Oscar and Alphonse" has an appropriately heartbreaking ending. The rest of the collection is hit or miss. Cory Doctorow's "Another Place, Another Time" is among the most disappointing, as he takes what is arguably the most iconic image in the book and turns it into an unintelligible mumbo jumbo of time-travel jargon. Chronicles turns out to be a mixed bag, but at the same time it is a potent reminder of the brilliance of Van Allsburg's original creation.-Tim Wadham, St. Louis County Library, MO

Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2011
Grades 3-7 Now a classic picture book, Van Allsburg's The Mysteries of Harris Burdick (1984) features 14 enigmatic charcoal drawings, each with a title and a caption. Readers are told that a mysterious Harris Burdick dropped off the images at a publisher and promised to return with the accompanying stories, but he never appeared. In this follow-up volume, 14 noted authors for young people, including M. T. Anderson and Linda Sue Park, fill in the missing stories. Each entry inspired by a drawing includes Van Allsburg's original art and caption. Although the stories are distinctby turns funny, sinister, and touchingthey have much in common, sharing an arch tone, curious metaphysics, and some familiar folk-tale tropes (siblings in peril, frog transmogrification, gingerbread, etc.), and the authors' commitment to the original conceit gives the volume additional cohesion. No mysteries are solved here. Indeed, the reader is left with even more questions than before. This collection promises to inspire many more children to revisit Van Allsburg's striking scenes and imagine for themselves just what is really going on.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)