The Museum of Everything by Lynne Rae Perkins (9780062986306)

When the world gets too busy and big, you can look at the smaller pieces around you. You can put those things in a quiet place like a museum in your mind. Or maybe it could be a real museum. It could have things like a Museum of Islands because there are so many kinds and sizes. A Museum of Bushes could have skirts made out of different bushes and then real bushes too. A Museum of Shadows could have usual shadows but also ones that you don’t expect. The Sky Museum is already right over your head, ready to be seen every day. All these small pieces fit together in one large puzzle, creating the Museum of Everything all around us all the time.

Newbery Medalist Perkins has created a picture book exploration of imagination that invites readers to look around themselves and see the elements that are worthy of placement in their own museums of everything. She takes expansive ideas and turns them firm and real with her examples given through the perspective of the child narrator of the book. The result are charming stories of bushes, hiding places, shadows and much more. The everyday is turned amazing.

Her illustrations are done in a wide variety of media. Some pages are done in collage, the paper elements overlapping into a layered world. Other pages are filled with objects that celebrate bushes and hidden places. These are 3 dimensional dioramas or sculptures that draw readers right into them.

Celebrating the extraordinary ordinary, this picture book is a lesson in imagination and creativity. Appropriate for ages 4-6.

Reviewed from e-galley provided by Greenwillow Books.