Thalia Book Club: Chris Van Allsburg's The Chronicles of Harris Burdick

Written by Chris Van Allsburg

Narrated by Madeline Cohen and Jon Sczieska

Chris Van Allsburg sits with Madeline Cohen to discuss the short story collection The Chronicles of Harris Burdick. Jon Sczieszka joins the discussion and reads his contribution to the collection, "Under the Rug."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Symphony Space
• Release date: Dec 4, 2011
• ISBN: 9781467664004

Reviews for Thalia Book Club

[deldevries · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The ultimate fill in the blanks story book - a picture to get your creative ideas started. Inspirational and creative.

[casiebelaire · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The author, Chris Van Allsburg, tells a story of retired book publisher, Peter Wenders. Mr. Wenders was in his office one day when a man introduced himself as, Harris Burdick. This man said he had written 14 stories and drew many pictures to go along with the stories. He showed Mr. Wenders the pictures he drew and Mr. Wenders was fascinated. Mr. Wenders wanted to read the stories that went along with these fascinating pictures. He asked Harris Burdick to come back with the stories as soon as possible. Burdick agreed and left the 14 drawings with Wenders and was never heard from since. Burdick never showed with the stories. This mystery of Burdick’s disappearance and the stories that went with the drawings have never been solved. Burdick did write the title and a caption for each picture he drew. Mr. Wenders’s children and their friend were the only ones who wrote stories to go along with Burdick’s drawings. Chris Van Allsburg reproduced the Burdick drawings for the first time ever hoping that they inspire children to write a story. All of Burdick’s pictures are in black and white. These drawings will definitely allow children to stretch their imagination when writing a story about them. All the picture’s titles and especially the captions are very mysterious, this will enable the students to have free reign in their creative writing. This is a great writing activity that can be done around Halloween time.

[h5jo · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I was given this book when I was a child and I still love it as an adult. I've never encountered another book quite like this. Very inspiring.In fact, Steven King himself wrote a short story based on one of these timeless illustrations ("The House on Maple Street," I believe).

[bookworm12_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A beautiful book which sparks the imagination. There are a collection of paintings with a single mysterious caption for each one. I think it would be wonderful to see what kind of stories kids could come up with for each illustration.

[iamryancorcoran · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great book with pieces of stories that can be finished by students creativity.

[mcnicol_08 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was a very unusual story as the author introduces titles or phrases from stories that could have been. The illustrations are absolutely intriguing and beautiful. Pictures are worth a thousand words is very applicable to this story as the reader must take the title and phrase and imagine what would have been a story. From a personal aspect, I absolutely love the inferring skills applicable to this work. I do wish the author would have create these stories from the book, which is why I gave the book 4 and 1/2 stars. However, from an educator stand point this would be a great book to spark older student's creative writing for a writer's workshop and write the stories for the author.

[smlawrence-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Chris Van Allsburg truly awakens my imagination, his books are unlike any other. I had so much fun reading and looking at the pictures and pages in this book. I was utterly fascinated, each page is a completely different adventure, strange and enticing at the same time. Even though it is hard to pick a favorite, I really liked "Mr. Linden's Library", a picture of a girl asleep with a book in her hands with the caption, "he had warned her about the book. Now it was too late". I think this implies that the book takes the girl on a crazy experience within her dreams, the book comes to life. I hope to share this book with my future students to get their creativity flowing.

[lbblackwell · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Simple black and white illustrations with a title and a single caption prompt the reader to create his/her own story behind the mysterious picture.Great writing activity!!

[kbernard-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The first time I heard about this book was recently. I'm upset that I've missed out on it so long. It begins with a mysterious letter about the pictures in the book. The story involves a man who was sent pictures with captions that 'supposively' went along with stories. Unfortunately, the man was never heard from again so the pictures were left with untold stories. It's a book of all of the portraits together. I would love to use this in my classroom for a creative writing activity!

[mccooln · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of the things that I love about Van Allsburg is that he seems to be fascinated with "what if" and in this book he inspires "what if" in the reader with this collection of mysteriously acquired pictures. This would make an amazing writing prompt lesson and would inspire even the most adamant student howling "I don't know what to write!!!"

[afussell-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is filled with pictures with a caption attached to it. This is good for middle age students and younger because they can use their imagination to come up with their own stories.

[klmontgomery-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Good book to read to children where they can make up their own stories. The book is full of separate stories (lines) and pictures.

[hannahrevard · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

These fantastic images allow readers to make their own multiple narratives or one whole narrative about all the images. This book could be very useful in the classroom.

[aalkurd-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS BOOK! I love how every picture screams a different story. Little minds have immense imagination. I LOVED IT!

[ktankers · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book gives kids the freedom to think and create. This is a one of kind book by allowing kids to make up their own stories without having any right or wrong answers.

[adriennewood · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was very cool! This book is a collection of drawings with short introductions to what is going on in each image. It is cool because these images allow the reader to make up their own stories.

[dukefan86 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Fascinating pictures and captions! Wish I'd known about this book when I was teaching, would've been great for story starters. Chris Van Allsburg strikes again!

[diamonddog_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great to use as story starters with middle school children. Such imagination inspiring illustrations and simply one line of text to get your mind going in all sorts of directions.

[kerry5wood · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

B/W Real Life Illustrations, Few Words, but just enough for imagination

[mdgilmor · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

 This picture book consists of a series of unrelated pictures, each with its on title and caption, nothing more, nothing less. This is a great book to get the reader's creative juices flowing. The reader has the room and prompt to come up with his or her own stories for each picture. The book features a very impressive background on how the pictures came to be part of the picture book. A great read!

[ccostakis_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was an interesting book that was more a collection of images than a story. The introduction explains where the images come from and is integral to understanding the book as a whole. With each image comes a title and a short caption that seems to be an introduction or part of a story and definitely makes you wonder about the image. This could be used as an interesting launch into a written piece for children.

[sadams30 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The illustrations are mesmerizing, especially to kids. It triggers their imagination and they are able to come up with amazing stories to complement the pictures. I used the portfolio edition with 7th graders as a jumping off point for mystery writing. The stories that they came up with were completely varied and the students loved this unit. The focus that they had throughout the unit was something I'd never seen before in middle school writing. I loved it and so did the kids.

[replayguy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Vivid images with a back story that you can use to help start imagination flowing. The pictures are part mystery, part scary. Harris Burdick left the nearly wordless pictures without telling the stories, so you can make them up. The drawings are excellent and the black and white adds another creative dimension as you have to color them in your mind.

[rileykoch · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Strange book -- fascinating text and illustrationg.

[derbygirl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

(easy, picture, young reader fiction with non fiction elements) What an interesting book! On the first page is an introduction explaining who Harris Burdick is and the origin of the illustrations you are about to look at. In a nutshell, (you'll have to check it out for yourself, it's just too interesting), Mr. Burdick left fourteen illustrations with a children's publisher. These fourteen illustrations only had a title and a caption. Mr. Burdick told the publisher that he had fourteen stories to go with the illustrations and that if the publisher liked the illustrations he would bring the accompanying stories the next day. Of course the publisher wanted to see the stories right away. Well, Mr. Burdick was never seen or heard from ever again. As a matter of fact, there has never been any information found about him. So all we have left are these mysterious illustrations and our imagination. This book explores all fourteen of the illustrations. Also in the introduction we are told that the publisher's family and friends that saw the illustrations took the liberty of writing their own stories to go with the pictures. Now, that would be an interesting book too...hmmm....! A fun activity would be to invite your readers/ listeners to pick one of the illustrations and write a story about it.

[etwinney_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A collection of thought provoking pictures with a short sentence that will inspire the reader to think about each picture. Each page is a great story started that will allow children to free write about "What if?".

[elliegiles · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An awesome book inspired by a set of paintings. Each one contains a short sentence or couple of sentsences that lead the reader to wonder what happened in each of the pictures. These are great stories to allow children to free write about "what if?".

[alliecipa · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is a collection of black-and-white pictures and titles left at a children's book publisher by the mysterious character Harris Burdick. Burdick was never seen or heard from again, which adds to the suspense of the book. These pictures are great for children to look at and create their own stories to go along!

[jessicabrin · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A series of unrelated, fantastical images paired with intriguing titles guide young imaginations into creating stories of their own to accompany the pictures. According to Van Allsburg's author's note, the images have a mysterious past, having been left with a book publisher by an author (Harris Burdick) who later vanished.

[annashapiro · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Reading the introduction, we learn that Harris Burdick walked into a children's book publishing office with 14 stories that went along with 14 illustrations he had drawn. Leaving the illustrations in the publishing office, Burdick was never heard from again, and the stories that go with each drawing remain a mystery. The only thing we have left is a title and caption for each picture. In one drawing, an overwrought man holds a chair over his head and is about to hit a lump under the carpet. The title and caption are: ''Under the Rug': Two weeks passed and it happened again.' In another, a boy and a girl skip stones on the sparkly surface of water. The title and caption are: ''A Strange Day in July': He threw with all his might, but the third stone came skipping back.' Some of the drawings are scary, some are mysterious, some are dreamlike, but all are evocative and full of wonder and imagination.