Travel Tales

These ten stories focus more on travel in the imagination than travel through space. "Travel Tales" is a gold mine of illustration art: from the cartoonish to the painterly, with some collage and airbrush technique thrown in for good measure. The pages are without borders, so artwork saturates each page. Even the text design is unique in each story. Ten European artists contributed to this diverse collection. The strangest story, "A Snail's Pace," is about a girl whose nose takes a trip during a boring dinner party. More conventional stories include "Alfred of a Thousand Journeys," about a boy exploring his grandmother's house, where the kitchen is "the land of sweets" and the basement contains "mysterious underground regions." My favorite is "Aziz, the Blue Carpet," in which a flying carpet slips under the door, escaping for a wild ride to the desert.Some reviewers have written that these stories are too off-beat to be appreciated by younger children, but I disagree. The youngest among us are most open-minded, and don't necessarily expect pat endings. My son enjoyed this book very much at age five. Older folks may be more likely to consider these stories "wierd" because most do not follow the usual formulaic plots or moralistic endings so common in children's literature. I give this book five stars for those who appreciate the unconventional in art and literature; four stars for those who may prefer a more traditional story book.