![]() ![]() “The fifth one ended up in France,” reads the caption to a non-story called “The Seventh Chair,” while the illustration depicts a pair of clerics in a cathedral-like edifice contemplating a nun in a chair suspended some twenty-five feet off the floor. One of Van Allsburg’s most intriguing books, The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, offers no story at all, just a series of unrelated illustrations from implied but unwritten narratives, each accompanied by a single caption from a nonexistent story. ![]() He asks you to contemplate a world in which jungle animals suddenly run amok in your house, or a train chugs up the street in front of your house en route to the North Pole. He doesn’t craft clever plots or develop interesting characters. Van Allsburg is closer to the Grimm Brothers than to Disney his world is chilly but awe-inspiring and full of wonder. ![]()
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