#393 of 1001 · August 28, 2021

The book of the day is an evocative wordless dream sequence: Damon Lehrer’s Rocket Boy. A young child sits in his room, sketching a rocket. To his surprise, the rocket comes to life, lifts off the page, and blasts out the window. Testing the limits of his newfound artistic powers, the boy draws a convertible car and a giant ramp leading out his window. He drives down the ramp, performed a jump off its upturned end, and flies into the mouth of an enormous pipe leading to another world. There, a mysterious girl shows him where his rocket has made a crash-landing. After executing a portrait of the girl, the boy attaches the rocket to the side of his car and drives back out of the pipe, through the night sky, into his house (whose roof miraculously opens on hinges to welcome him in), and directly back into a sheet of blank paper waiting on his bedroom floor. Suddenly, the boy awakens in his bed to discover that his entire adventure was merely a dream…or was it? Lehrer’s striking grayscale drawings represent the action of this strange nocturnal outing in powerful black and white. #rocket #boy #draw #drawing #paper #night #girl #dream #magic #book #books #childrensbooks #beautifulbooks #picturebook #picturebooks #picturebookillustration #childrensbookillustration #childrensliterature #illustration #kidlit #kidsbooks #bookworm #booklover #booklovers #bibliophile #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookstagrammers #instabook #instabooks