Ths wonderful book is part of a series of works of short stories that Joan Aiken started in the late 1960's. All of the books in the series were illustrated by a fairly new illustrator named Jan Pienkowski. Of course, later on, Jan Pienkowski became quite famous for the weird and wonderful pop-up books he created (and still creates today). In this book, there are no pop-ups, but the way the black and white illustrations are backed by vivid colors, making the images pop out at you -- almost as if they WERE true pop-ups.
The stories in this particular book are mostly fantasy /adventure stories -- "what if" themes:
"What splendid things you can remember, even if they didn't happen (like the zebra you got for your birthday or all the doughnuts in the world which you ate without being sick), if you hold the leaf of a memory tree in the palm of your hand..."
I haven't come across this combination of Jan Pienkowski and Joan Aiken before -- I wonder why. Now that I have, I'll be on the look out for more.
And, for those of you thinking about commenting --- yeah, I need to get a better picture of this up. I'll try. And maybe even some of the illustrations too.
