Book picks similar to
The Invisible Kingdom by Rob Ryan


picture-books
childrens
picture-book
fantasy

The Marvels


Brian Selznick - 2015
    After surviving a shipwreck, he finds work in a London theatre. There, his family flourishes for generations as brilliant actors until 1900, when young Leontes Marvel is banished from the stage.Nearly a century later, runaway Joseph Jervis seeks refuge with an uncle in London. Albert Nightingale's strange, beautiful house, with its mysterious portraits and ghostly presences, captivates Joseph and leads him on a search for clues about the house, his family, and the past.

Mouse Bird Snake Wolf


David Almond - 2013
    They have built mountains, forests, and seas and filled the world with animals, people, and unnamed beasts. Now their days are fat with long naps in the clouds, mutual admiration, and tea and cake. But their world has gaps in it filled with emptiness, gaps that intrigue Harry, Sue, and little Ben until they begin to see what might fill them. One by one the children conjure, from twigs and leaves and stones, a mousy thing, a chirpy thing, and a twisty legless thing. But as the children’s ideas grow bolder, the power of their visions proves greater and more dangerous than they, or the gods, could ever have imagined. Is it possible to unmake what’s been made?

The Imaginaries: Little Scraps of Larger Stories


Emily Winfield Martin - 2020
    Emily Winfield Martin, shares her "Imaginaries": paintings from over the last ten years, captioned with one sentence.From mermaids and giant flowers to magical robes and mysterious characters, each image is given a one-line caption--the beginning of a story, or maybe the middle--you imagine the rest.The captions are hand-written on vintage scraps of paper, envelopes, postcards and more.

The Only Child


Guojing - 2015
    USA Today  declared it “a compelling and melancholy debut from an important new talent" as well as "an expansive and ageless book full of wonder, sadness, and wild bursts of imagination.” And like Shaun Tan's The Arrival and Raymond Briggs's The Snowman, it is quickly becoming a modern classic.   A little girl—lost and alone—follows a mysterious stag deep into the woods, and, like Alice down the rabbit hole, she finds herself in a strange and wondrous world. But... home and family are very far away. How will she get back there?   In this magnificently illustrated—and wordless—masterpiece, debut artist Guojing brilliantly captures the rich and deeply-felt emotional life of a child, filled with loneliness and longing as well as love and joy.

Ballad


Blexbolex - 2013
    The initial sequence consists of three images: beginning, middle and end of a journey. The following six sequences take up this same story, but with new details and extra images added each time. The story thus quickly becomes enormous as the number of new images doubles with each sequence.

You Are Stardust


Elin Kelsey - 2011
    From its opening pages, the book suggests that we are intimately connected to the natural world; it compares the way we learn to speak to the way baby birds learn to sing, and the growth of human bodies to the growth of forests. Award-winning author Elin Kelsey — along with a number of concerned parents and educators around the world — believes children are losing touch with nature. This innovative picture book aims to reintroduce children to their innate relationship with the world around them by sharing many of the surprising ways that we are all connected to the natural world.Grounded in current science, this extraordinary picture book provides opportunities for children to use their imaginations and wonder about some big ideas. Soyeon Kim’s incredible diorama art enhances the poetic text, and her creative process is explored in full on the reverse side of the book’s jacket, which features comments from the artist. Young readers will want to pore over each page of this book, exploring the detailed artwork and pondering the message of the text, excited to find out just how connected to the Earth they really are.

Black Dog


Levi Pinfold - 2011
    Only Small, the youngest Hope, has the courage to face the black dog, who might not be as frightening as everyone else thinks.

Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time


James Gurney - 1992
    When a powerful typhoon wrecks the ship in uncharted waters, Arthur and Will are the sole survivors. Washed ashore on a strange island called Dinotopia, they are amazed to find a breathtaking world where cities are built on waterfalls, people have found new ways to fly, and humans and dinosaurs live together in harmony. With new discoveries at every turn, Arthur and Will embark upon their own separate journeys to unearth the mysteries of Dinotopia.

The Imaginary


A.F. Harrold - 2014
    He doesn't exist, but nobody's perfect.Only Amanda can see her imaginary friend – until the sinister Mr Bunting arrives at Amanda's door. Mr Bunting hunts imaginaries. Rumour says that he eats them. And he's sniffed out Rudger. Soon Rudger is alone, and running for his imaginary life. But can a boy who isn’t there survive without a friend to dream him up?A brilliantly funny, scary and moving read from the unique imagination of A.F. Harrold, this beautiful book is astoundingly illustrated with integrated art and colour spreads by the award-winning Emily Gravett.

The Time of Green Magic


Hilary McKay - 2019
    Abi suddenly finds herself the middle child, expected to share far too much—especially with grubby little Louis. Then they move into an eerie, ivy-covered house, big enough for all of them. But for the children, strange things start to happen in that house. Abi reads alone, and finds herself tumbling so deep into books, they almost seem real. Louis summons comfort from outdoors, and a startling guest arrives—is it a cat or something else? Max loses his best friend…and falls in love. Meanwhile, Louis’s secret visitor is becoming much too real. Now Abi, Max, and Louis must uncover the secrets of their new home—for there can be danger in even the most beautiful magic.

Voyage of the Basset


James C. Christensen - 1996
    Through richly detailed full-color paintings and line drawings, magical kingdoms emerge from a sea of dreams. Cassandra Aisling, who is nine years and eleven months old, doesn't care “a jot” about what sensible people think. She likes strange, mysterious, and magical things. So when her world gets tumbled upside down, she boards the H.M.S. Basset, ready to explore the landscape of her imagination. Pledging allegiance to the Basset's motto, “Credendo do Vides...Believing is Seeing,” Cassandra, her skeptical older sister Miranda, and their father, Professor Algernon Aisling, set out in search of the ancient legends. From the flickering flight of fairies and the mermaids' siren songs to a labyrinth-bound Minotaur and a fire-breathing dragon, the Aisling family witnesses firsthand the wonder of mythological worlds. In this lavishly illustrated edition, Cassandra's adventures intertwine with her father's scientific scribblings to present both new tales and the essence of classical myths. From the two voices, readers learn the power of imagination, the importance of believing in oneself, the value of family, and the need for creative, cooperative problem-solving. The story of a magical journey and the exquisite fantasy artwork will appeal to young and old alike.

The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine


Mark Twain - 2017
    In a hotel in Paris one evening in 1879, Mark Twain sat with his young daughters, who begged their father for a story. After the girls chose a picture from a magazine to get started, Twain began telling them the tale of Johnny, a poor boy in possession of some magical seeds. Later, Twain would jot down some rough notes about the story, but the tale was left unfinished . . . until now. Plucked from the Mark Twain archive at the University of California at Berkeley, Twain’s notes now form the foundation of a fairy tale picked up over a century later. With only Twain’s fragmentary script and a story that stops partway as his guide, author Philip Stead has written a tale that imagines what might have been if Twain had fully realized this work: Johnny, forlorn and alone except for his pet chicken, meets a kind woman who gives him seeds that change his fortune, allowing him to speak with animals and sending him on a quest to rescue a stolen prince. In the face of a bullying tyrant king, Johnny and his animal friends come to understand that generosity, empathy, and quiet courage are gifts more precious in this world than power and gold. Illuminated by Erin Stead’s graceful, humorous, and achingly poignant artwork, this is a story that reaches through time and brings us a new book from America’s most legendary writer, envisioned by two of today’s most important names in children’s literature.

Home


Carson Ellis - 2015
    Home may be on the road or the sea, in the realm of myth, or in the artist's own studio. A meditation on the concept of home.

The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish


Neil Gaiman - 1997
    "Oh-oh," said my little sister.What if you wanted your best friend's two goldfish so much that you'd swap anything for them, even your father?What if your mother came home and found out what you'd done?The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish is a hilarious adventure and was the first book for younger readers from the acclaimed author and illustrator of the New York Times best-sellers The Wolves in the Walls and Coraline. Chosen as one of Newsweek magazine's Best Children's Books of the Year, The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish is beloved by readers of all ages. This new edition features brand-new jacket art and an afterword by the author on the origins of this unique and wonderfully funny story.

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse


Charlie Mackesy - 2019
    The boy, the mole, the fox and the horse have been shared millions of times online - perhaps you've seen them? They've also been recreated by children in schools and hung on hospital walls. They sometimes even appear on lamp posts and on cafe and bookshop windows. Perhaps you saw the boy and mole on the Comic Relief T-shirt, Love Wins?Here, you will find them together in this book of Charlie's most-loved drawings, adventuring into the Wild and exploring the thoughts and feelings that unite us all.