1. Animals
2. Anthropomorphism
3. Art techniques
4. Birds
5. Book design
6. Emotions
7. Fantasy
8. Imagery
9. Imagination
10. Marine life
11. Mystery
12. Perspectives
13. Seas and oceans
14. Symbolism
15. Visual literacy
16. Wordless picture books

The foil-decorated jacket cover invites the viewer into ‘The Storyteller’s Handbook’. Here viewers experience a wordless picture book featuring highly detailed Ink pen hatching and watercolours. These fill 128 double page spreads with 52 unrelated fantastical images. Hurst reveals that she wanted ‘to mix up the world, taking things out of their normal place and playing with size and expectations. I also love to have things interacting strangely.’

The saying, ‘the more you look the more you see’ is an apt description here. Each page features a juxtaposition of humans, animals and fantastical creatures engaged in activities in unusual locations, perhaps underwater, in the heavens, or on the streets. Each page offers yet another unexpected vista such as a duck in an art gallery looking at portraits of bears and alligators. Creator, Elise Hurst, says she created narrative illustrations as ‘a doorway to step through’.

Six stand-alone brief statements (referred to as break-outs) prompt thinking about what stories may emerge. There are many fantastical elements in the illustrations where the ordinary becomes extraordinary. Creatures may be realistic, imaginary or anthropomorphised while settings are often a mix. Familiar animals feature such as bears, lions, foxes, rabbits, fish and birds along with mollusks and an armadillo yet these are often mis-sized, out-of-place, partly imaginary and exist within oceans, cities and streets that mix fantasy and reality.

The cream coloured pages are the perfect background for the intricate, often highly detailed line artwork and minimal colour that surprises, provokes and invites close examination. ‘The Storyteller’s Handbook’ attracts multiple viewings and rewards rereadings.

1. The Storyteller’s Handbook – Go behind the scenes with Elise Hurst, YouTube, From her studio Elise Hurst briefly describes her aims with this book, 25 May 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQinB4Sehcw
2. Elise Hurst’s website, ‘How It Began: Beginnings of The Storytellers Handbook by Elise Hurst’, here Hurst talks about her sketch books and offers a Q&A between herself and Neil Gaiman who wrote a foreword for this book https://thestorytellershandbook.com/about/
3. ‘The Storytellers Handbook Teaching and discussion notes’ https://thestorytellershandbook.com/res/Storytellers%20Handbook%20Teachers%20NotesFINAL.pdf
4. The Children’s Book Review by Bianca Schulze, ‘Elise Hurst discusses The Storyteller’s Handbook: 52 Illustrations to Inspire Your Own Tales and Adventures’, 21 June 2022 https://www.thechildrensbookreview.com/2022/06/elise-hurst-discusses-the-storytellers-handbook-52-illustrations-to-inspire-your-own-tales-and-adventures