1. Ambition
2. Art motifs
3. Art techniques
4. Childhood and youth
5. Creation
6. Dreams
7. Endpapers
8. Imagination
9. Inclusion
10. Sharing
11. Visual literacy

This is a book with very little text, an aspect that amplifies its essential message that imagination can take us anywhere and everywhere.

Here a young boy sits on the edge of something, possibly the world and imagines a new world, a world without boundaries, where everyone is welcome. A world without the constraints of invented boundaries. It is rather a world that recognises that we are all connected and feel that connection to the earth. Throughout there are attempts to stop the boy, to make him see his ideas are silly, childish, and impossible but he defies the rules and wants; he needs to be free, welcoming others to join him in his non-country of ‘Imagi-nation – no passports required’.

Imagination is a powerful human trait that has contributed to many of the world’s great achievements in art, literature, science, and engineering. As many of us know the most imaginative toy a child can have is not the toy itself but the box it came in. There are no rules about what it is or isn’t as it becomes whatever can be imagined – a boat, a rocket ship and much more. In ‘Imagi-nation’ a boy imagines a world free of the artificial constructs that society imposes, a world where our connection to each other, to nature and to the freedom to think and imagine.

Integral to the book are Bronwyn Bancroft’s colourful and intricate artwork. The boy is shown sitting on a dome-like structure, the world perhaps while below the rule-makers, the naysayers, the adults are depicted as hands reaching up to pull him down but above the boy is a rolling scene of images streaming from his imagination. Below the hands begin to change to human shapes quizzing his thinking, telling him his thinking is childish and impossible. The boy persists and the images change developing connections to the boy’s thinking and finally joining him in ‘Imagi-nation’.

Jack Manning Bancroft is a proud Bunjalung man. In 2005, at age 19, he founded Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME) which aims to find a solution to Indigenous inequality in Australia. Driven by imagination and audacious kindness he re-designed the concept of mentoring. In 2010 he was the NSW Young Australian of the Year.

Bronwyn Bancroft is a descendent of the Djanbun clan of the Bunjalung nation. She is a leading Indigenous artist and illustrator whose work is held in the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and the Australian Museum. She is a well-known author and illustrator of children’s books.

1. Scholastic Australia Teaching Notes for ‘Imagi-nation’ by Jack Manning Bancroft https://resource.scholastic.com.au/ResourceFiles/100133857_123871.pdf
2. Australia reMade Season 3, Ep 13: ‘Imagi-nation with Jack Manning Bancroft’ https://www.australiaremade.org/podcast-home/season3-ep-13-jack-manning-bancroft
3. University of Sydney. Sydney Alumni Magazine: ‘Creative Connections – Jack Manning Bancroft and Dr Bronwen Bancroft’ https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2024/05/15/creative-connections.html
4. Facebook: ABC Australian Story video ‘The Power of Child-like imagination’ Jack Manning Bancroft https://www.facebook.com/ABCAustralianStory/videos/the-power-of-child-like-imagination-jack-manning-bancroft-australian-story/534599669367571/
5. The Saturday Paper 14-20 October 2023. ‘The Indigenous Knowledges Systems Lab’ by Jack Manning Bancroft https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/life/2023/10/14/the-indigenous-knowledges-systems-lab#mtr
6. Sesame Street: Imagination (Word of the Day podcast) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYSLo7eVLDQ
7. About My Brain blog 18 June 2014 by Tao de Haas. ‘The Importance of Imagination’ https://www.aboutmybrain.com/blog/the-importance-of-imagination
8. The Spoke: Early Childhood Australia’s Blog by Michelle Carrick, 25 November 2020. ‘Imagination at the heart of cognitive development’ https://thespoke.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au/imagination-heart-cognitive-development/
9. Youtube Tom Nicholas ‘How Countries Were INVENTED’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8rL9vgsT6g