Journey

Author & Illustrator:
Aaron Becker
Published:  2013

Take your time as you read Journey and discover everything in it!  I keep discovering new favorite books each time I pick up a new one.  This book reminded me of Harold and the Purple Crayon as well as Where the Wild Things Are.  A crayon and imagination help a girl escape to a world of color and adventure. 

The endpapers are red with pictures of different forms of transportation.  Things that we use to escape the world we live and travel to other places from a local beach, to another country, or even the moon!  The little girl has not discovered her escape yet, but she will.  The first two pages are dark and dreary.  A little girl is sitting on her stoop, bored.  Her father is busy working on the computer, her sister is playing on her game system, mom is cooking and talking on the phone.  The girl has a scooter, that is colored red, her escape, but she doesn't use it.  On this page, there are only two colors.  One of the colors is red, the color to stop, wait, not go.  There is also a little boy, he too is alone, away from the other children, but he has a purple crayon.  (Maybe it's Harold!  (-: )  In the distance a purple bird is also soaring above the buildings. 

The girl tries to get her family to interact with her, but they are too busy.  So, she goes to her room.  The picture of the room is in a frame right in the middle of the page, you can tell the girl is lonely.  Even the cat wants nothing to do with her and walks out of the room.  Luckily, the cat had been sitting on a red crayon which she uses to unlock the door to another world.  The new world is colorful and there is freedom.  When she experiences isolation in this new world, it too becomes dark and dreary, like the world she lives in, but she is able to find a colorful escape with the help of a purple bird drawn by a boy with a purple crayon, who becomes a new friend.

This is a wonderful adventure that will inspire children to write.  I am finding that my struggling readers are also enjoying reading the picture books I'm sharing with them in class.  They are able to interpret more in the pictures than many of my other children because they depend on the pictures to translate the words.  These books put no pressure on them since there are no words, they just have to notice the pictures.  They are noticing the endpapers, the colors, and lines.  It's so much fun discussing these books with them. 

Check this book out from the library!
Like Aaron Becker on Facebook!