Author
Chris Van Allsburg
3 books here
The Polar Express
Picture book · ages 4–8 · 740L · 2000
Van Allsburg's most enduring picture book — the prose is literary and the illustrations carry genuine atmosphere; read it aloud to catch the layered melancholy beneath the magic.
Jumanji
Picture book · ages 4–8 · 740L · 1982
Van Allsburg's masterpiece: the illustrations are so vivid and menacing that kids genuinely feel the peril, but the sibling partnership and logic-puzzle endgame make it ultimately empowering rather than just scary.
The Garden of Abdul Gasazi
Picture book · ages 4–8 · 740L · 1979
A masterpiece of visual storytelling where the pictures are the plot—Van Allsburg's charcoal illustrations force kids to look harder than the text alone demands, and the ending reframes everything.