Kirsty Knows Best

This is the sort of imagination-stretching book that works at all sorts of levels with all ages. The story of ordinary, drab Kirsty who daydreams her way out of tedium and bullying is interesting in its own right. It's given extra value by the prose that is used for the prosaic and the rhyme that distinguishes the fanciful. And then, of course, there's Anthony Browne. As usual his pictures extend the text into a whole new world of imagery and allusion. Take just one page, on which Kirsty imagines herself travelling to school by rickshaw pulled by the school bully. The scene seems to be a willow pattern plate until close attention shows the Loch Ness monster, a wind surfer, Popeye, and so on and on. Something else to find on almost every page, including a gorilla and the brooding presence of the bully, makes one extraordinarily aware of the murkier aspects of the everyday and the liberating influence of fantasy. Highly recommended.