#320 of 1001 · June 16, 2021

For some people, bedtime poses no trouble—it may even be a welcome event. For others, it’s quite a different story—they toss and turn restlessly for hours before slipping off into slumber. The protagonist of @imageblockstudio’s Dreamland may well belong to this latter group, but it’s refreshing to view the frustration of insomnia from her playful perspective. Amelie experiences each night as a journey through a hazy world where wakeful sensations are represented as physical elements of the topography. She drifts high and low across a surreal, uncertain landscape, images refracted and sounds distorted through the lens of somnolence. At last, she finds her way to her own bed, at once the farthest and the nearest points in her excursion, and drops into cozy sleep. Klocek welcomes a warm ambiguity in both his soothing text and his cool-hued digital art: each well-chosen phrase and carefully composed image furthers the hypnagogic duality of the book’s central extended metaphor. #dream #land #night #bed #bedtime #sleep #journey #book #books #childrensbooks #beautifulbooks #picturebook #picturebooks #picturebookillustration #picturebookillustrations #picturebookart #childrensbookillustration #childrensliterature #illustration #kidlit #kidsbooks #bookworm #booklover #booklovers #bibliophile #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookstagrammers #instabook #instabooks