This Book is a Time Machine (Tracey Dembo, illus Lucinda Gifford, Affirm)

Children, and readers of all ages, delight in books where all is not as it seems: conventions of time and space may be disrupted; the narrator speaks to the reader to break the ‘fourth wall’, and characters exit the page. This Book is a Time Machine plays with these techniques and becomes an artefact to explore time. Debut author Tracey Dembo and illustrator Lucinda Gifford (Neil the Amazing Sea Cucumber) become narrators and characters when they enter the book and speak to the reader. They interact with each other as they explain the concepts of the past, present and future through their creative process in constructing a book. When a spaceship tears a page in the book, time itself is torn. In gloriously riotous illustrations, creatures from the past—a dinosaur, a giant octopus, a mummy from ancient Egypt, and even a volcano—come through the rift in a time warp. The ingenious (and timely) use of a leaf blower saves the day. Highly visual, funny and clever, this book offers much to think about. It even acknowledges the future use of artificial intelligence to create a book. A must-read for those who enjoyed the experimental metafictional picture books The Wrong Book by Nick Bland and No Bears by Meg McKinlay and Leila Rudge.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Joy Lawn has worked for independent bookshops and blogs at Paperbark Words. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

Category: Reviews