posted on 01 Feb 2016

The Imaginary by A.F.Harrold, illustrated by Emily Gravett

This is a pretty scary book for adults with nervous dispositions like me, never mind children. It has a similar atmosphere to 'Coraline' by Neil Gaiman which still haunts me with the chilling image of the people with buttons instead of eyes. The premise of the story written by A.F. Harrold, who is an English poet and author of the Fizzlebert Stump series of books, is that those of us who have powerful imaginations often have imaginary friends, and that this is a good thing because they are out there waiting to attach themselves to the right individuals. Not in any sinister way you understand, but as a way of making life much more interesting and meaningful. We first meet Rudger, one such ' imaginary' boy who is conjured up by the delightfully practical, no nonsense Amanda Shuffleup, a young girl who is always up for an adventure and who lives with her mother. We soon learn that her mother also had an imaginary friend when she was a child, a dog called Fridge, who reappears later in the story.

The joyous ordinariness of the book is made memorable by the overall unusual design and the many illustrations by Emily Gravett, a well respected and popular author/ illustrator in her own right, who won the Macmillan Prize for Illustration with Wolves in 2005. The beautiful end papers are reminiscent of red and white wallpaper densely packed with images of flowers, dragons, butterflies, skulls and other potential nightmares that a child might use as an inspiration for stories. Her black and white pictures spread throughout the book are sometimes across two pages and sometimes facing a page of written text. There are also plenty of little detailed smaller drawings to break up the quite dense pages of written text. Apart from one coloured illustration on page 21, all are in black, grey and white, some on black pages until several splendid double page coloured spreads start to appear more than half way through the book.

So far so good but this is not an entirely happy world to be in. Early in the story there is a knock at the front door and everything becomes very worrying as we meet Mr Bunting, a moustached, sunglasses-wearing baddie dressed in shorts and a flamboyant Hawaiian shirt who is accompanied by a strangely silent moping schoolgirl. Their raison d'etre seems to be to sniff out any ' imaginaries' and dispose of them in a truly horrifying way. 

The main action of the story from this point is as a result of an accident befalling Emily and Rudger's quest to find her again before he fades away, which is the fate of long separated imaginaries unless they stay in the odd waiting room in a library which Rudger accidentally discovers with the help of a magical cat. 

There are several more difficulties for Rudger to overcome to avoid fading which includes being imagined by another child for a while as a girl in a frilly dress. Eventually, he finds Amanda where she is lying in a hospital bed. The final denouement with Mr Bunting and his sidekick when they succeed in hunting them down is full of suspense. As you might hope, the imaginative powers of Emily and her mother are what are constantly save the day. The message throughout the book is therefore avery satisfying one with more than a grain of truth: an active imagination is to be encouraged because it makes life much more interesting but also it is important because it can save you when times get bad. 

So, although I have cautioned you to read this with the lights on, it is a very enjoyable unusual story with wonderful illustrations that I think you will find very satisfying.

 

Karen Argent

31st January 2016