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Think Outside the Box by Justine Avery and Liuba Syrotiuk (view source)
Revision as of 09:49, 18 September 2020
, 09:49, 18 September 2020no edit summary
|title=Think Outside the Box
|sort=Think Outside the Box
|author=Justine Avery and Liuba SyrotuikSyrotiuk
|reviewer=Jill Murphy
|genre=For Sharing
And so begins the latest picture book from Justine Avery and Liuba Syrotiuk. It's a clarion call to children to use their imaginations and not logic alone when it comes to solving problems. It takes the reader through all sorts of different situations where creative thinking could be called for: some are serious, some silly, some are really quite surreal. But the important thing is all are great fun and all provide an invitation for children to come up with their own ideas and solutions. The text is brief but always positive and encouraging and in that trademark Avery style which sometimes subverts rigid rhythms but is somehow simultaneously perfect to read aloud.
Liuba SyrotuikSyrotiuk's illustrations are an absolute triumph. They're bright and bold and energetic, befitting the theme of imagination and creativity perfectly. My absolute favourite was the upside down umbrella turned into a water collector. It's slightly subversive in a Heath Robinson kind of way but also shows how a crazy imagination can lead to very practical solutions. I don't know about the little ones but I could feel the big grin spread across my face as I turned this particular page. And there is plenty of room for discussion too - could you actually win a race by being the slowest? How? When? Is it silly or clever to eat an ice cream cone from the bottom up? Why?
It's never too soon to show children that while necessity is the mother of invention, creativity is the process that takes us from one to the other. And that ideas, even the nutty ones, should always be shared and not buried for lack of confidence. I love the message of ''Think Outside the Box'' and I love the format too. At first, it appears a little bit repetitive but, when you think carefully about all the different ideas Avery presents, you can see the wisdom in all of them.