Two in particular suited my purposes. Sleeping Bunny (Random House, out-of-print) by Emily Snowell Keller and Pamela Silin-Palmer is a silly take on the fairy tale classic, Sleeping Beauty. The paintings are so rich with detail. Carrots cross in coats of armor, good fairies are named after flowers and dressed appropriately. There are some corny plays on ‘hoppily ever after,’ but the brilliance of this book is in the border to border attention to imaginative detail.
The other is A Summertime Song (Aladdin, out-of-print) by Irene Haas. A young child named Lucy is given a magic hat by a frog and when she puts it on, she becomes a wee person whose journey through her own garden is completely changed by her size and new perspective. Animals and insects come alive and the illustrations, set against dark dusky backgrounds have an ethereal quality. Flowers and leaves form raiment for mice and birds.
