Chris Van Allsburg Continues Harris Burdick

This is Ryan with 300 words (or less) to make your Monday a little less taxing

with great news I heard from my favorite illustrator, Chris Van Allsburg!

As a child, I would pick up the book that barred my last name, open it cautiously knowing full well what was inside. Bumps under rugs, peeling wallpaper and prowling lights would terrify me with one sentence captions that only made it worse.

Terrifying yet…intriguing. It was one of those things I couldn’t help but look at…
-and still can’t help today.

This is Chris Van Allsburg’s book The Mysteries of Harris Burdick which has also been a mystery to me until today at TEDxUofM. I had the privilege to talk to Chris after his talk on his new book, Queen the Falls about one of the craziest ideas of the 20th century: the charm-school teacher who decided to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

I not only found out why in the world did this man write The Mysteries of Harris Burdick for children (which is based off matted pictures with accompanying captions found a flea markets), but found out there is an addition in the works.

The Chronicles of Harris Burdick, fourteen additional authors writing new captions to the pictures will be released October 25th! Contributers include Gregory Macguire, Stephen King and my favorite author Lemony Snicket!

It doesn’t sound like a winning formula: terror in image + brief and deep caption= best children’s book—but it does!

I can’t wait to see one of my favorite books retold!

This entry was posted on Monday, April 11th, 2011 at 7:28 am and is filed under Culture & Style, Images, News & Rumors, People. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.