This is a book with 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 Earth and imagines a new world, a world without boundaries, where everyone is welcome. A world without the constraints of invented borders but one that recognises that we are all connected and feel their 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’ society imposes, a world where our connection to each other and to the nature takes precedence and there is freedom to think and imagine.
Integral to the book are Bronwyn Bancroft’s trademark 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 it is childish and impossible. The boy persists and the images change as does the colour of their speech bubbles developing positive 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.
Picture Books for Older Readers
