Ronyell's Reviews > The Mysteries of Harris Burdick

“The Mysteries of Harris Burdick” is a brilliantly surreal book from Chris Van Allsburg and it is full of various stories that a mysterious man named Harris Burdick leaves behind for Chris Van Allsburg’s friend Peter Wenders to read over and the stories that the mysterious man leaves are only drawings that have titles and small captions under the titles. “The Mysteries of Harris Burdick” is a beautifully surreal book that will enchant children for many years.

Chris Van Allsburg had done a magnificent job at reviving this lost collection of stories from Harris Burdick. The stories are beautifully surreal as the audience only sees an image on the right of the page along while there is only a title with a small caption underneath it is on the left and the title and the captions are the only clues on how the story should be, such as the story “The House on Maple Street” the audience could only indicate that the house was a rocket and it was set for lift off. Also, each image portrays a dark or tranquil story, such as in “Mr. Linden’s Library,” there are vines growing out of the girl’s book indicating that she will be tied up by the vines. Chris Van Allsburg’s illustrations are both haunting and beautiful at the same time as there are various images of people being either sad or frightened by whatever supernatural situation befalls them. Also, the images are all in black and white colors which give the book an ominous feel to the stories being portrayed here.

Parents should know that this book may be a bit too confusing for smaller children since the only evidence of a story for each image portrayed in this book is the title of the story and a small caption giving a brief dialogue from the story. Small children might have a hard time trying to understand what each story is about since there is no clear evidence of an actual story going on for each image.

“The Mysteries of Harris Burdick” is a brilliant book for children who love to read about mysteries. I would recommend this book to children ages five and up since smaller children might not be able to understand the stories.