The Chronicles of Harris Burdick: 14 Amazing Authors Tell the Tales

Chris Van Allsburg has always been the Rod Serling of the children’s literary world. Of that there can be no question. With no other author, not Gorey, not Snicket, not even R.L. Stine himself, will kids encounter that eerie feeling that can only be best associated with classic Twilight Zone episodes. All his picture books (even nonfiction ones like Queen of the Falls) suggest to the reader that ours is a world not far removed from the ones featured in his books. Maybe coloring books really do [...]

Actual rating: 3.5 stars. The best stories in this collection have a sense of possibility, of capturing a moment at the beginning or in the middle of a much larger tale, inviting the reader to continue off the page with their own imagination. Those are also the stories that, for me, capture the spirit of the original Harris Burdick book (which I inexplicably found in my house – how did it get there?) -- the endless promise, and the strange and wonderful and dreadful directions in which each il [...]

Reviewed by Rusty Key Writer: Jordan B. NielsenRecommended for: Children (?) ages 10 and up for independent reading, or 7 and up if being read to (get ready to explain a lot of abstract metaphysical concepts to little Tommy), though I suspect this book will find its largest audience among those old enough to be lured in by the all-star author line up (guilty).One Word Summary: Disappointing. It was too good to be true. A collection of children’s short stories by fourteen of the most celebrated [...]

One of my favorite children's books of all time is The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg. I was so excited to find a story by Stephen King based on one of the illustrations in Nightmares and Dreamscapes, so I was 14x excited to find that a whole book of short stories based on the illustrations was coming out! These are stories that would appeal to a wide range of children and teens, and probably many adults as well, just like the original book. The stories are filled with magic a [...]

When I was a young child, I wrote a letter to the publisher of The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, offering my theories on what might have happened to the author. I was such a cute, precocious little nerd. Now as an adult I can obviously tell who really illustrated that book, but it's still much beloved by me. I was super excited about this collection, but I felt like it was just OK. There weren't a lot of standout stories for me. I found it really interesting how many times sailors and sea voyages [...]

I CAN'T WAIT to read this series of stories! I have LOVED the Harris Burdick book for use to spawn creative writing from my elementary students! I am intrigued to read what famous authors had to say! Yippee! It is about time! ;-)So, in reading all of the different stories from each illustration, I found about 3 that I really liked and the rest were okay. I think that because I have had so many students write so many creative stories to go along with the illustrations, it is hard to top some of t [...]

2.5 out of 5I just HAD to read this short story collection after reading its source of inspiration, The Mysteries of Harris Burdick.Eh, I guess my expectations were too high Hey, but look at the impressive author list! It DOES sound too good to be true, hahaMy favorite piece was Lemony Snicket's introduction. I also liked the stories by Jon Scieszka, Stephen King, M.T. Anderson and Louis Sachar. The others (by Sherman Alexie, Gregory Maguire, Cory Doctorow, Jules Feiffer, Linda Sue Park, Walter [...]

Allright! One book and I get to pass judgement on fourteen writers! Here goes:Linda Sue Park 4.8 starsReally fantastic. Intricate, interweaving of story lines with a great "hook". Hard to believe a story this nearly perfect was written as an excercise. Amazing.M. T. Anderson 4.7 starsVery nearly my favourite story of the collection with a great twist ending sure to blow the minds of young readers. A perfect match to the illustration.Kate DiCamaillo 4.6 starsShe makes cat nip out of most of her p [...]

More like 3.8 starsI'd "read" the original book by Chris van Allsburg years ago, and was really excited to see that some of my favorite authors had written stories to go along with the fabulous illustrations. Some of the stories were great: Another Place, Another Time by Cory Doctorow about parallel universes; Mr. Linden's Library by Walter Dean Myers about the power of books. Some were really good - I particularly enjoyed the fantasies: The Harp by Linda Sue Park about bickering sisters who fal [...]

When I was in grade 5 or 6 (some time in the late ‘90s) my teacher decided that we were going to do a literary unit on Chris Van Allsburg. The weeks that followed had us reading Jumanji, The Z was Zapped, The Polar Express, and every other Van Allsburg book that we had available in our school library. With each book we did a project and the one that went with The Mysteries of Harris Burdick was my favourite. That’s because the project that we did was this book.Ok, it wasn’t this book exact [...]

The concept of this book is in direct opposition to the concept of the original. Also, the stories suck.

I've owned this book for years; a gift from my awesome husband who knew I would be absolutely delighted to see the the illustrations of Harris Burdick come to life with stories by authors who I know and adore. This summer I finally sat down to read this gem only to discover that the stories were… Strange. Fantastical. Definitely for outside-of-the-box thinkers.I honestly enjoyed probably one story in this collection. (Props to Sherman Alexie's "A Strange Day in July" for jussssst the right amo [...]

Short stories are often what stick in my head. So reading this for the second time was like turning a light on in my mind. Caterpillars that do math. Metal that invades houses. Ships in Venice. Fake pumpkins. These stories and pictures will randomly pop into my head, and often I have no idea where they are from. Now I do. My favourite stories are "Missing in Venice" by Gregory Maguire, "Just Desert" by M. T. Anderson, and "The House in Maple Street" by Stephen King. But I also really love "The S [...]

I had never heard of the whole Harris Burdick concept until Katie picked this for her book club selection. Which is strange to me, because I feel like I should have heard of this super creative and kind of really awesome concept of Chris Van Allsburg publishing illustrations with captions next to them, and encouraging the audience to tell their own stories. Like I said, super creative. I really approve. The neat thing about this book is that it takes that concept and applies it on a pretty large [...]

Who has not had Chris Van Allsburg’s Mysteries of Harris Burdick used as a writing prompt—besides Sean? N and I were kicking around the idea of checking the book out from the library when I heard The Chronicles of Harris Burdick was coming out. I told Natalya she still should write her own inspired piece, but there was no having The Chronicles in the house without her getting a hold of it. It features some of her favorite authors.(11 for a while now) Natalya’s response the experience? She [...]

When I taught middle school English, I used Chris Van Allburg's The Mysteries of Harris Burdick as short story prompts in my classroom. Once I stopped teaching, I brought my collection of prints home and now several of them hang in my house (I have "Mr. Linden's Library" in my office/bedroom, and Cami has "Oscar and Alphonse" in her room). When I found out that some of my favorite YA authors were going to be writing short stories to accompany these drawings, I was so excited. This collection, fo [...]

I came across this book while looking for a book club book for the adult literacy program I work for. The reading level and book length are on spot--I think this could be a good choice, although it would probably make a good book for October which has already passed. This book is essentially a companion book to "The Mysteries of Harris Burdick" which is a book with pictures, their titles, and short captions, and the reader is left to imagine the stories that the pictures go with. THIS book gives [...]

Very very rarely, I will swoon over a book. Swoon-worthy books must not just be well-written, they have to be beautifully packed, or have exquisite illustration, mostly, all three. Four stories into The Chronicles of Harris Burdick I was already swooning. Mind you, this is the ARC, too, not the gorgeous hardcover that will be the best holiday gift when it hits shelves.What strikes me as I read- one story at a time, with space between each to savor- is the inventiveness of the writers. Van Allsbu [...]

OMG, OMG, OMG!!!! I tend to pass on reviewing a lot of children's literature because I don't want to hurt feelings of people who may, if I ever publish another work of fiction, be in a position to review my work. But sometimes I read something that is so great that I have to tell the world. I have always adored The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg - a collection of incredible artwork with captions only. They are so inspiring. Now, some brilliant person decided to ask authors to [...]

Who is Harris Burdick? In his intro, Lemony Snicket tells us that Burdick dropped off fourteen beautiful illustrations, each with their own title and caption, to a stranger, promising he’d return with more illustrations and stories to match. But he never returned, and so fourteen writers have done their best to put a story behind each picture (or perhaps, as Snicket theorizes, these fourteen were contacted by Burdick in secret and given the stories to match, or had them hidden in their homes f [...]

This follow up to Van Allsburg's infamous picture book is, like most collections composed of a sampling of different writers, a mixed bag. Happily, most of the stories are enjoyable, and some are excellent. Tabitha King's stands out as the least impressive (per usual with Mrs. King, one wonders if she'd have any career were she not married to Stephen King), and for my money the best is Sherman Alexie's wicked tale of two twins whose nasty pranks come back to haunt them. The rest of the stories r [...]

A weird book, as weird in its way as the original picture book. Every story is well crafted, some are standouts, and none really pander to the children who will be reading them. The short stories are interesting and challenging, and most look for the reader to find meaning between the lines. Most of the tales veer into sci-fi and fantasy, as you'd expect, and many remind me of the stories from the old science fiction magazines I used to read in my early teens that led me into the genre of scienc [...]

The idea behind this book is that a group of prints were found with no back story, only one drawing per page with a title or caption. In the past many children and adults developed their own story, based on these Chris Van Allsburg drawings.Were they random prints or did they all go to the same story? No one knew. It was up to each readers imagination. This book picks up from those original prints and asks famous writers to develop an essay to go with each print. While the prints themselves are [...]

First of all, I must confess that The Mysteries of Harris Burdick has long been a mainstay in my writing toolkit. For several years, I have used the illustrations and their captions as story-starters for my students at all levels, from middle grades to graduate students. There is something compelling about the captions and the artwork that simply begs writers to tell a story or two. The combination somehow makes writers out of the most reluctant ones. In this book, something of a tribute to the [...]

I think any fan of children's books would be familiar with the works of Chris Van Allsburg. After all, he's written Jumanji, The Garden of Abdul Gasazi, The Polar Express and many others. One of which was a beguiling collection of strange pictures with tantalizing captions called The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. In that book you were left to wonder what the stories were surrounding these unconnected pictures. Now 14 authors are trying their hand at it and the result is this handsome book. I deci [...]

We borrowed this book along with The Mysteries of Harris Burdick from our local library. We read that book first, coming up with our own short stories to go along with the fourteen pictures. Then, we embarked on a journey to see what other authors came up with. From the moment we saw that the introduction was by Lemony Snicket, we were hooked. Our girls loved the stories and I was excited to see so many of our favorite authors pitch in to contribute tales. I'm not sure what took us so long to fi [...]

Finding this book was a fannish dream come true for me: Chris Van Allsberg is one of my favourite contemporary illustrators, and the list of contributing authors blew my childrens/YA-lit lovin' mind: Kate diCamillo, Jon Scieszka, Lois Lowry, Cory Doctorow I also loved the Twilight-Zoney Mid-Twentieth Century vibe, which is right up other fannish alleys of mine.Some of the stories are fairly dark and/or trying too hard to be deep and literary, I think, which would make them challenging for younge [...]

This book was doomed to disappoint me. I loved the original book and imagined the stories many of the pictures illustrated. I even wrote my own story for the picture "Mr. Linden's Library," which, obviously, was nothing like the one in the book. I can't imagine that any set of stories written about these pictures could ever be good enough because they wouldn't be the ones I imagine.So, what did I think of the book then? I liked it. Several of the stories were a disappointment because either I di [...]

I was blown away by this book, mostly because I have used "The Mysteries of Harris Burdick" in class. I had anticipated using this book in conjunction, first having the students write their own story as I have done in the past, then reading the published story, but I believe that this book is a bit dark for elementary students. I will, however, pass the idea on to my high school English teacher sister. I enjoyed reading the different stories (one per picture) written by well-known authors. It wo [...]

I had to return this to the library before I read all the stories but as you might expect the stories mostly weren't as good as whatever I might have imagined when I first saw the pictures in The Mysteries of Harris Burdick.Still, I liked Sherman Alexie's disturbing children, and Stephen King's house being taken over by a rocket ship, and especially MT Anderson's suburban idyll with a secret.