Into the Woods, by Anthony Browne

Oh! Another treasure. This book is so cool, everyone needs to read it. Actually I'm sending an alert to all teachers who may happen to read this: READ THIS BOOK ALOUD TO YOUR CLASS! SEE WHAT THEY NOTICE! What do you notice? I noticed that the book had an almost, not almost, just plain depressing undertone... until the end. Don't worry, it's a very unexpectedly happy ending.

The cover may remind you of a well-known fairy tale, actually many of the themes throughout the book are taken from various fairy tales. The boy's imagination seems to be filled with them. The story begins with a thunderstorm, a very depressed mother, a missing dad, and a worried boy. All very dramatic! Then the boy is somehow carrying a basket through the woods to Grandma's house (she's sick, sound familiar?).

You know how, when you are a child, even the smallest task can seem like a dangerous adventure? I remember being scared to death of taking anything down to "the cellar" when I was a kid. It's not that it was scary. It wasn't even really a cellar - it was a completely finished and furnished downstairs level. That didn't matter, what mattered was that my imagination was running wild - I visualized giant, drooling, warty, frog-like demons lurking in the darkness at the bottom of the stairs. It terrified me! I always had to run back up the stairs as fast as possible and push the "monster button" (the knob on the handrail) so I would be safe and the monsters would remain down in the darkness where they belonged.

Anyway, this book explores a child's fear of venturing outside of their comfort zone, and how the imagination can take over the entire experience.

Once again, the illustrations are so awesome! I love the way Browne exemplifies his gift of creating irony and symbolism not only in the text, but ESPECIALLY in the illustrations. There are hidden messages, hidden pictures, and just strange stuff going on in the forest. If you don't see it at first, look harder... and it only gets stranger and stranger as the story progresses.