Knock, knock ...

Front cover

Keeping with Anthony Browne, I thought I'd feature a lesser known picturebook, which was written by Sally Grindley and illustrated by Anthony Browne.  Knock, Knock, who's there? was Browne's tenth picturebook, first published in 1985 - it was republished in 2010, so still available through The book depository and cheaply through the second hand book market at Amazon. 

It's a fun little book, featuring a little girl snuggled up in bed and waiting for her daddy to come and say goodnight.  While she waits she is visited by all sorts of scary fairytale creatures, in a repetitively visual romp. 

The front cover shows us one of the creatures from inside, a freindly looking dragon, comically holding a sign with the title of this picturebook, "Knock, Knock, who's there?"  His plaid slippers look incongruous at the bottom of his bright green scaly legs. These slippers appear consistently throughout the book. They feature on the title page...

Title page

Typical of Browne's characters, this little girl has a fringe down to her eyes and dark hair.  She's peering over at the recto page, at the door which is about to open.  

Opening 1

There are two visual clues to help us guess what will come through the door: we can just see the black fingers holding onto the door and there are bananas interspersed between the pink roses on the wall paper. Guess what's coming ...

Recto of opening 2

"I'm a great fat GORILLA with fat furry arms and huge white teeth." The gorilla fills the doorway, and his plaid slippers look very silly!  "When you let me in, I'm going to hug your breath way!"  We turn the page again, and the little girl denies entry... 

Opening 3

"Then I WON'T let you in!" We can see her imagining the gorilla squeezing her breath away. Even teddy is squeezed. Thus we are set up with this repetitive refrain which comes another five times after the question "Knock, knock, who's there?"  Look carefully at the recto in opening 3, what creature is coming next?  The tip of a pointy black hat pushes its way through the door, and there are black cats between the roses. 

Recto of opening 4

This time the little girl will be turned into a frog if she lets the witch in ... there are those slippers again.  Next she is visited by a ghost, who says he will "spook" her!  A ghost with "chains that jangle and clank", and slippers of course. Little ghosties sit between the roses in the wall paper. Next is the dragon we saw on the front cover.  We can see smoke through the door before it opens and there are firey flowers between the pink roses on the wallpaper. A cool green dragon, who stands hand on hip, confident in his slippers!  He will eat the little girl for tea ... so she doesn't let him in. 

Next is my favourite of fantasy creatures, there's a spiked club nestling between the roses on the wallpaper ... What could it be? 

Recto of opening 10

"The world's tallest giant, with eyes like footballs and feet like a football pitch", clad in plaid slippers of course!  And he is going to tread on the terrified little girl. 

Opening 11

She won't let him in of course. Finally we hear the last "Knock, knock!" - pink roses sit between pink roses and we can see pink fingers clutching at the door in the recto of opening 11. 

Recto of opening 12

It's daddy ... "big cuddly daddy with a mug of hot chocolate and a story to tell." Of course she lets him in, and we see a triumphant little girl (in a very cool nighty), stand with her arms open, welcoming her daddy. 

Opening 13

She recounts everything that happened and then confirms that she knew it was her daddy really, and we finish with the same plaid slippers we started with ...

Last opening

Younger primary children will enjoy looking for the clues in the wall paper, and calling out, "KNOCK, KNOCK. Who's there?" and "Then I WON?T let you in!" And you can play games matching the different deeds the fairytale creatures promise they are going to do.  You could even play around with 'going to' for intention if you wish! 

But mostly what's so nice about this picturebook is the way the visual is so predictive and this will help the children pick up chunks of language and successfully help you retell the story. Don't forget to leave it in their class library so they can peer closely at the wall paper and find those clues. 

Billy's worry dolls

Front cover

I've just returned from a one-day event organised by the very dynamic primary and pre-school nucleus, APPInep, of the Portuguese English Teachers' Association, APPI.  The event was attended by about 80 teachers and I picked up some great ideas and one in particular I want to share with you from Stephanie Pereira, an English teacher in a Bilingual French-Portuguese school in Porto.  She shared how she used the picturebook Silly Billy by Anthony Browne with a group of 9-year olds.  I'll tell you about the picturebook, then share some of her ideas.

Worry dolls

But before describing the picturebook, I'd just briefly like to tell you about Worry dolls from Guatamala.  Tiny colourful dolls, which according to the legend... "If you have a problem, then share it with a worry doll. Before going to bed, tell one worry to each doll, then place them beneath your pillow. Whilst you sleep, the dolls will take your worries away!"  The dolls are made of wood, bits of cloth and thread, as you can see from the image here on the right. 

Silly Billy is a picturebook that acknowledges childhood anxiety and suggests a simple, practical way of alleviating it. It has a visual theme running through it which reflects the colourful worry dolls, and in Browne's usual way he plays with colour and monochrome to bring emotion and to make visual connections - he is masterful. 

The front cover in the version I have is very colourful, (I've seen versions with the word 'Billy' in white).  The letters spelling out the title are bright and coloured, and are placed against a black background which accentuates them further.  If we look closely we see that the 'I' is a doll-like shape and an unhappy doll at that, and a boy figure, we must assume it's Billy, is marching, hands in pockets into the book. He's smiling and his posture shows he is feeling positive.  It's important to return to this cover once we've read the book as these visual touches will have much more significance - Browne is already showing us what happens in the story, but of course we don't know that yet. 

Upon opening the picturebook, passing two brightly coloured pages, one yellow, one pink, we  come to the title page.  

Title page

The title is monochrome and contrasts the small painted wooden box alongside Anthony Browne's name.  We can just see something in the box: do the children know what this box is and what might be inside? Do you?

Opening 1

Turn the page and we are into the body of the book. (Opening 1 is actually a double spread, but I've only photographed half of it.) Here's Billy, but quite different from the boy we saw on the front cover, there's no bounce in his step and his socks are pulled right up to his knees - his mouth is forlornly drooping.  "Billy used to be a bit of a worrier."  "... used to be", prepares us for a happy ending, for we can deduce that he is no longer a worrier. We are told and shown about all the things he worried about. 

Opening 2

The following spreads show framed illustrations against brightly coloured backgrounds, and as we can see from opening 2, above, when we are told about Billy's dreams, Browne uses monochrome, sepia tones.  Billy's worries were surreal and dream-like... he worried about hats (notice even the flower pattern on the wall takes on the hat shape), shoes mark across his room and out of the window (the wall paper pattern is of footprints); a cloud hangs threateningly over his bed (guess what the wall paper pattern shows) ...

Opening 4

He worried about the rain, and we are shown his bedroom flooding, the sepia replaced by a turquoise blue.  His bed is covered in water (look at the wall paper).  The final worry is frightening: he worried about giant birds and we are shown a stiff doll-like Billy being carried off by an ugly bird twice his size (wall paper?). 

These are BIG worries, unfounded worries, but worries children might also have themselves. Billy's mum and dad comfort him. Bright illustrations of big, happy, rosy-cheeked parents, hugging Billy - making him feel safe and loved.  "... it's just your imagination", said his dad; "We won't let anything hurt you", says his mum. 

But Billy still worried ...

Opening 6

One day he was staying at his granny's house.  Look at the bedroom, so different from his own - busy wall paper with a complicated pattern, a big bed and no light switch close at hand to grab for comfort.  The picture above the bed represents a well known painting, Wonderer above the sea of fog by Casper David Friedrich.  Why Browne decided to place this particular painting in the bedroom leaves loads of space for speculation.  It is said to be a painting of a German officer standing "in contemplation and self reflection, mesmerized by the haze of the sea fog as if it were a religious and spiritual experience. He wonders in that moment about the unforeseen future" (see web link above). Is this Billy's worry, the unforeseen future?  He decides he is being silly and goes to see granny. 

Opening 7

Granny is a large-headed, dark-skinned lady. The frame in the verso of opening 7 is decorated and colourful and matches the decorations in the six little dolls that are shown in close-up on the recto page.   "... When I was your age I used to worry like that.  I've got just the thing for you."  Could granny be from Guatamala?  She looks South American.  I love the illustration of her hand, it is so life like, you can even see the veins in her wrist.  Six little dolls lie on the palm, smiling at the reader.  The doll on the far left is the one on the front cover.   Granny tells Billy what to do with the dolls and his life takes a turn for the better.  Sunny illustrations show us Billy sleeping peacefully, "like a log" and "like a stone" for several nights. 

Opening 9

Until ... oh no!  Look at that dark looking verso on opening 9.  Billy started worrying again.  He was worried about his worry dolls.  All depicted like mini humans, mouths turned down and looking very worried and upset.  Luckily Billy was becoming quite resourceful and he spent the next day busy at the kitchen table.  He worked hard, "... at first ne made lots of mistakes and had to start again many times", but he didn't give up and managed to make something "very special ..."

Opening 11

... lots of worry dolls, for his worry dolls.  Clever Billy.  They are all smiling and our smiling content Billy, in stripy pajamas, is shown against a pastel, yellow background.  Peace incarnated, angelically sleeping!

But Anthony Browne doesn't stop there, one more opening ...

Opening 12

Here we have Billy again, almost exactly like the figure in Opening 1, but he's smiling, his step is light, his socks are at his ankles.  He's a cured Silly Billy, and he's kind enough to share his cure with his friends for he makes them all worry dolls.  How generous of Billy. 

... and the last page of the picturebook has a nice bit of information about worry dolls for children to read about. 

Unlike many of Browne's picturebooks, which feature chimpanzees or gorillas (eg Willy the wimp), Billy is a little boy, but he has chimp-like features (big ears and a parting down the middle of his hair) he's also wears a stripy jumper, rather like the one Willy the chimp wears, so if you are familiar with Browne's picturebooks you will recognize visual connections between some of his characters. In fact in opening 1 the illustration of Billy is almost exactly like the one of Willy on the cover of an early edition of Willy the wimp. Billy's Mum and Dad are also very similar to the characters illustrated in Browne's books, My Mum and My Dad.

I have posted about two of Anthony Browne's picturebooks, The Piggy Book and Me and You, but I am so glad that Stephanie has reminded me of the suitability of his work, in particular this title.  She described sharing it and using the illustrations to talk about worry dolls and their credibility. The children discovered a little about Guatemala, where it is in the world, what its people are like and what language they speak. She made the link between Brazilian Portuguese and South American Spanish and together with the children discussed the historical reasons for these two language existing in South America, a perfect link to the topic of the Portuguese discoveries which the children had studied that year at school in history. The final product was the making of a worry doll, out of wool, with children taking it home and using it to dispel their own worries. Did it work, it seems so, for children came back to school saying "I slept like a log"!!

What I especially liked about the work she shared was the way she used the children's linguistic repertoires - the languages they had at their disposal: these children were learning English as their 3rd language and spoke Portuguese and French already.  They compared the titles in the different languages, for the different versions existed in the school library.  They looked at some of the idiomatic expressions like, 'sleep like a log', 'sleep like a stone', 'sleep like an angel' in the different languages and enjoyed seeing how different or similar they were in meaning.  They also openly agreed in places, that certain translations just weren't right and they made suggestions for how they would translate them.  Empowering stuff!

Stephanie also encouraged the children to make the visual connections between the other Anthony Browne picturebooks they knew, and sure enough they were able to, creating affective links with the picturebook through these connections. 

Rich experiences and such a pleasure to see them taking place through picturebooks in English. Many thanks to Stephanie for sharing and prompting me to reconsider this lovely picturebook for the ELT classroom. 

Who was Goldilocks?

Front cover

Goldilocks and the three bears is a well known children's story in English speaking countries and when I first began using it in Portugal in the early 90's very few Portuguese pre-school educators knew it, it's more well known now I think.  It's a story we use in ELT for numbers and family (mummy, daddy and baby); every thing comes in threes (three bears, three bowls, three chairs, three beds) , and there are some nice adjectives (hot and cold, hard and soft and just right!).  We assume , if we think about it at all, that Goldilocks is a spoilt little brat, going where she has not been invited, doing what she's not meant to do and generally well deserving of the fright she gets when the bears find her in their bedroom. Anthony Browne, takes us on quite a different visual journey in his picturebook Me and You.  In an interview about his picturebook, he says: 

"I always thought that Goldilocks got a rough deal in the original and I'm trying to redress the balance. How do we know that she was a greedy, selfish little girl? Perhaps there was a reason for her to enter the bears' house? I'm trying to tell the story from two different points of view: the baby bear's story shown in warm, reassuring coloured pencils, and Goldilock's harsher existence painted like a graphic novel, in sepia tones."  The result is a perfect picturebook, to be contemplated from front to back cover, with nothing missed out. 

Back and front covers

The front and back covers of the hard back edition are one whole image, a grassy area in front of a long row of terraced houses.  The bear family are presented on the cover, looking out as us, as though we are taking a photo of them all, a happy little family. In the background, by chance we've also photographed a solitary figure, walking head down, hands in pockets.  

Front endpapers

The endpapers are plain with no illustrations, however the baby blue and orange are prominent in the two narratives we find in the picturebook.  The blue belongs to the bear and his family and the orange to the sepia illustrations of the little girl. 

Title page

The title page contains two illustrations which are copies from later in the book.  They are fittingly inside frames, two very different characters in different worlds, and placed under the three title words, "Me and You", for the story that follows is told in the voice of the little boy bear. The two illustrations are different in both tone and style, the bear is drawn with coloured crayon, the bright colours contrast the duller, darker sepia tones of the watercolour illustration of the little girl, who has a tiny piece of auburn hair sticking out from under her hood, (it almost connects her to the bear).  The title uses different fonts which emphasise the difference between the two characters as well. The dedication on the facing page reads, "For all the underdogs". 

Opening 1

The little boy bear introduces us to his house, a warm yellow home, number 3 (of course!) in a spot of bright green, in the background the rest of the city appears to be big and industrial-like, (but those chimneys and towers could also be tall tree trunks).  There's a menacing looking wolf-like dog entering the illustration, but everything else looks serene and peaceful.  The three bears are each seen from separate windows, in different parts of the house and a solitary red ball bounces alone in the garden outside.  

Opening 2

The book continues in double page format, verso in sepia showing us the little girl's story and recto in bright, picturebook-like colours showing and telling us the little boy bear's story.  The little girl's world is daddy-less, it's cold and drab, they live in a small house in the city, and when we see mummy pause in front of the butcher there is confirmation that there may not be much money to spare either. Now the recto, and if you look carefully at the pencil crayon illustrations, you will see everything is outlined in the orangey brown of the bears, uniting the images within their world. Daddy is tall and wide, behind a more fragile mummy and their cute little son, they ooze affluence - I love mummy bear's skinny ankles, all rich mother's have skinny ankles!  

Opening 3

As little boy bear tells us his story, the story we know so well about porridge that's too hot to eat, the little girl's story visually unfolds - a story we don't know at all, about a little girl who sees a balloon, tries to catch it and gets lost.   We see her face properly for the first time and she is frightened.  

Opening 4

The bears walk in their very posh neighbourhood - three together, yet very seperate, little boy bear describing the events. "Daddy talked about his work and Mummy talked about her work.  I just messed about."  (Look carefully at the background trees, notice anything odd?) We see the little girl walking, getting more and more lost and suddenly coming upon the bears' lovely yellow house in the middle of the greyness she has been runing from.  It is glowing, enticing her with its warmth and she pushes the front door open.   As she moves around the table trying the porridge, the bears walk back home.   As she tries the three chairs (and breaks the little one), they walk through their open front door, mummy and daddy accusing each other of leaving it open.  As the little girl walks up the stairs, we see the three bears begin the  someone's-been-eating-my-porridge-routine.  She tries the beds as the bears find the three chairs...'"We'd better take a look upstairs", whispered Daddy.  "After you, Mummy." '

Opening 9

The little girl is asleep, comfy in little boy bear's bed, her auburn hair flowing as though it's part of the wood grain in the headboard.  The bears are quietly climbing the stairs, '"Do be careful dear," said Daddy.' 

Opening 10

And there they are!  We see the same scene from both perspectives. The little girl in her sepia watercolour illustration is suddenly confronted by three scarey bears.  Browne has skillfully painted their fur to make them look prickly and mean, the background is dark, a darkness which seems to radiate from the bears. We are feeling so sorry for the little girl whose red hair is reflected in the bears' eyes. We see her terror in the little boy bear's version, as he continues with his well known monolgue ... "Someone's in my bed,"I said, "and they're STILL THERE."  Even the bears carved into the head board are surprised. 

Opening 11

The little girl flees. As the little boy bear describes her actions, we see her leave the bedroom, go down the stairs, out through the front door and into the street.  As she runs into the rain we can just make out the bear family peering through their windows at her, the little boy bear upstairs, the adults downstairs.  The graphic novel frames take the girl back into the grey city, past railings, walls topped with barbed wire and others covered in graffiti.  We see this as well as glance across at the little boy bear.  In his colorful picture he is deadpan looking through his window.  At first we are uncertain if he is in or out, the reflection of a wooded landscape looks like it is behind him... the forest that belongs to the original story maybe?  "I wonder what happened to her?" he says to himself.  
The ending is a hopeful one, I say this as Anthony Browne has described it so himself. And of course it is, the illustrations in the final spread are full of hope, at least the final frames are ...

Opening 12

Janet Evans interviewed Anthony Browne in her latest collection of chapters Talking beyond the page  and he explained how the story wasn't originally in its present form. He had thought of telling two stories, first the bear's then the girl's, but it was the editor who suggested telling two stories simultaneously, in parallel, with a hopeful ending. It works wonderfully and we all sigh a deep sigh as we see the girl reunited with her mum.  Do we think about the bear again? A lonely little chap, in his pretty house with a lovely garden.  


Anthony Browne is a genius - this picturebook is challenging on many levels. It needs to be read and re-read, and the children/teens/young adults you are showing this picturebook to, need to be encouarged to talk through what they see and think about as they piece the puzzles together.  When Browne was the UK Children's Laureate  (2009 - 2011) he said the following: " ... Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older. The best ones leave a tantalising gap between the pictures and the words, a gap that is filled by the reader's imagination, adding so much to the excitement of reading a book."   Me and You does just that and can be used with children and teenagers as a spring board for discussion. 


If you go to the CKG website here, you can download some excellent visual literacy activity sheets for a number of picturebooks, including Me and You.  

Pigs might fly: thinking about roles

Continuing with picturebook titles that promote discussion and thought, this post is about Piggybook by Anthony Browne, the present  children's laureate. Anthony Browne is probably most famous for his picturebooks with gorilla characters, and when he was nominated children's laureate in 2009 the title of the Guardian article was: 'Gorilla artist Anthony Browne becomes children's laureate'.  His surrealist life-like illustrations, full of references to other texts, draw you into the pages, and on each re-read there's something new and different to be found.  His picturebooks work on so many levels that they provide pleasure and delight to children and adults alike.  Piggybook is no exception and despite being written in 1986, its message still holds true.  It's an excellent picturebook for all ages to pour over and discuss, including teens and adults.  

The front cover provides an excellent opportunity for predicting the story.  There's an illustration of a sad looking wowan, carrying a man and two boys on her back, who look happy, their cheeks pink and rosey. The woman is  standing against a wall with patterned wallpaper which first appear to be pink tulips, but on closer inspection reveal themsleves to be transforming, Escher-like, into pigs' heads.   There's a lightswitch on the wall, which also has a pig-like look to it.  The dusty blue title, 'Piggybook' is a good contrast to the pinky coloured background.  The visual play with piggyback and piggybook may not be picked up by our students, but we can tell them that the woman is giving the man and boys a piggyback and they are likely to make the connection.  The back cover gives some very precise information about who the people are on the front cover.  "Mr Piggott and his two sons behave like pigs to poor Mrs Piggott - until, finally, she walks out. Left to fend for themselves, the male Piggotts undergo some curious changes."   There are three illustrated cameos from the inside of the book showing a sink full of dirty washing up, an uncleared table and a pig's trooter holding a piece of paper which reads, 'You are pigs'. We can make a pretty good guess as to what we will find inside now... even the family name is pig-like.

There are no endpapers in my paperback version, but the title page is delicious.  It shows two flying pink pigs, flitting across the page.  They remind me first of those ceramic flying mallards of the 1930s, which grannies used to have on the wall above the mantlepiece.  There were always three and though we can only see two pigs there's definitely a resemblence.  And then I'm reminded of the idiom, "Pigs might fly", something we say when we think there is no chance at all of something happening, another example of Browne's visual humour.  Our students may or may not know this expression, but older students in particular would enjoying learning it.  Even if the reader never makes this connection, which is most likely to be the case, it doesn't lose its charm. 

The opening page is typical of Browne's deadpan narration alongside a very suggestive illustration, which we look at before we read the words.  

We see Mr Piggot, looking his best, larger than large, with his two sons, imitating his pose.  They are in front of their house.  It is only upon reading the words that our attention is drawn to what's missing from the illustration:. "Mr Piggott lived with his two sons, Simon and Patrick, in a nice house with a nice garden, and a nice car in a nice garage.  Inside the house was his wife."  The careful positioning of the unnamed wife, at the end of the decsription after the mention of the car, says it all. 

Browne illustrates Mr Piggott and his boys looking out at the reader and in full colour, they appear initially very confident, in charge and in control.  Mrs Piggott  however is depicted in sepia, we can't see her facial features and she looks small, haunched and timid.  
The early pages of this picturebook set the scene,  Mr Piggott and the boys larger than life, demanding food and attention, their mouths are always open, as though calling for something and Mrs Piggott is always in another picture, cooking, cleaning and looking after her family, never physically with them in an illustration. Gradually, as we turn the pages, we begin to notice references to pigs emerging from the illustrations, Mr Piggott's shadow is pig-like; he's eating fat pork sausages, a close up of his mouth and chest as he takes the sausage to his mouth.  This illustration has no words, it doesn't need any. The climax comes the next day, when they get home to an empty house, "... there was no-one to greet them."   The boys are shown walking into the living room, and if you look carefully they have pig emblems on their school blazers and Mr Piggott has a pig like rose in his lapel - there are other pig references too.   

We turn to an illustration of the living room fireplace.  The wall paper is now definitely pigs not tulips, the tiles have blue pigs on them, the grating has pig-like decorations, the poker has a pig handle, there's a pig vase, a pig card, a pig pencil top and the imitation of Gainsborough's 'Mr & Mrs Andrews' shows a man with a pig's head standing next to what was his wife, but it has been cut out and removed.    
The facing page has the following text: "She was nowhere to be found. On the mantlepiece was an envelope.  Mr Piggott opened it. Inside was a piece of paper."  Under is the illustration of a pigs' trotter holding a letter, with the words "You are pigs."
And of course they are, Mr Piggott and his sons are now pigs in clothes and they try to look after themsleves by cooking  their own meals, which always tasted horrible. Everything's a mess, dirty dishes in piles, clothes stained and in need of a wash.  And there are constant references to the pigs in all these illustrations.

Even the dog has pig-like features, as does the telephone and the lampshade, and can you see the shadow in the window?  That's all we need in a story about pigs!  A wonderful intertextual reference to a wolf, which we automatically associate with three pigs from our exposure to the traditional story.   Many of the students in our classes will be familiar with this story and will make the connection as well.  

Finally we are told, "One night there was nothing in the house for them to cook. 'We'll just have to root around and find some scraps,' snorted Mr Piggott."  Notice the wonderful use of piggy-like words in these sentences.  And Mrs Piggott returns, Browne gives us a fabulous illustration, showing us the perfect ending, the pigs at Mrs Piggott's feet.  And the words on the facing page say, "'P-L-E-A-S-E come back,' they snuffled."  They could do nothing but snuffle, for they were pigs! 

But this isn't the end.  The following pages show the male Piggotts washing up, making beds and ironing, they even help with the cooking and finally we are shown Mrs Piggott, full frontal, she's smiling, a long fringe almost hiding her eyes, there's a smudge on her cheek ... and when we turn the page, we see her mending the nice family car, (look at the number plate!). 

Visually Browne really gives us lots to look for and at.  We don't see all of the visual clues the first, even the second time round.  It's a book which demands that we return to and browse through, taking our time with the illustrations and discovering the hidden messages Browne leaves us.  But the main message isn't hidden at all.  It's very clearly given and discussion around the male / female roles in the home can be both frightening and enriching.  These are important discussions and execellent opportunities for teens and young adults as well as older primary children to use English and think critically about what they see in the picturebook and in their own lives. 

Recently two English teachers working in the third cycle of Portuguese education attended a workshop I was running and they decided to design a whole sequence of activities around the book.  These activities involved not only English but other subjects too.  The students were encouarged to discuss male / female roles in Portuguese society today and in the past (history), look at women in other cultures (geography / social studies) and design a questionnaire in Portuguese to use at home and then analyze the results (maths).  It became a term long project and they were very excited about it. 

In Anthony Browne's speech accepting the children's laureate award he said: "Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older. The best ones leave a tantalising gap between the pictures and the words, a gap that is filled by the reader's imagination, adding so much to the excitement of reading a book". Piggybook is an excellent example of one of 'the best' ones.