Review: Santat, D. (2014). The adventures of Beekle: The unimaginary friend.

Santat, D. (2014). The adventures of Beekle: The unimaginary friend. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company.

Once upon a time, children everywhere dreamed up imaginary best friends for unimaginable experiences, confounding the adults in their lives for whom these creatures remained invisible.  Beekle is one such creature, born into a vibrant dimension where he waits to be conjured up in the mind of a child and lifted off through the stars, as all of his strange and inventive peers are.  Sadly, there seems to be a drought in imaginative children, and after many nights, Beekle takes matters into his own hands and sails away on a sea of fantasy until he reaches “the real world.”

The real world seems bizarre to Beekle, not child-centric at all, until he glimpses a child with imaginary friend in tow, and follows the pair to a playground.  This joy-filled place is more pleasing to his sensibilities, but he remains unmatched. Here he climbs to the top of a tall tree, looking out, and is ultimately found by his very own child.  Alice shows him her crayon drawing of the two of them in that very moment, and they go on to have “many new adventures” together.

The unimaginably creative mind of Dan Santat sparkles through not only the storyline but the edge-to-edge bright and detailed illustrations, done in pencil, crayon, watercolor, ink, and Adobe Photoshop, per the author’s explanation.  He also notes in this afterword, through a doodle, that “Beekle” was the word identifying “bicycle” used by his young son, to whom this book is dedicated. The endpapers feature sketched pairs of friends, each pair one child and one imaginary critter; one minor difference from front papers to back is that Beekle is alone and incomplete in the beginning, and stands happily with Alice in the end.  Beekle himself is drawn as a simple character, stark white against all the colors of his two worlds, and yet a representation of possibility incarnate. This book is sure to bring a content, Beekle-like grin to faces of readers of all ages, preschool to adult.

For the latest artwork by Santat, check out NO MORE POEMS! A Book in Verse That Just Gets Worse.