What the Sky Knows

Nike Bourke (author)

Stella Danali (illustrations)

University of Qld Press, Australia, 2005

ISBN: 0702235342

Genres: picture book, science

Issues: curiosity, creativity, imagination, perspective

CBCA Shortlist, 2006: Book of the Year, Early Childhood

This is a book to capture the imagination of readers of all ages. The very simple text is designed to stimulate creative thinking, to encourage readers to look at everyday things with new and wonder filled eyes.

How does the sky make clouds? Change colour? Hold up birds? What the Sky Knows celebrates the boundless curiosity of children and the astonishing things to be discovered in the wide world around them.

The illustrations, collages of textures and colours, will have young fingers reaching for the page. Apparently simple, naïve images are in fact clever compositions of patterns, lines and colours. Ordinary images out of context, or used in an unusual way, reinforce the text's determination to look at things from different perspectives. Even the print embedded in the collages, be it in English, French or German, is linked to the theme being explored on that page. Pictures contain intertextual references to such familiar classics as Alice in Wonderland (the Mad Hatter's Tea Party). Images take the reader off the page, leading their eyes into the world beyond. They can be turned 90 degrees and even more can be seen.

This is a definitely a book to stimulate young thinkers.