Ian Hayward Robinson (text) and Matt Shanks (illustrator), The Most Amazing Thing, A & U Children’s, February 2024, 32 pp., RRP $19.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781761180118
Everyone is stuck in the house on this wet day. Each person has something to do, but Henry is at a loss. His mother, writing her novel, suggests he draws the most amazing thing.
But he doesn’t know what it is.
His sister says it is life and lets him look down her microscope at all the minute lifeforms. His brother says it the human mind, which knows it knows things, but Henry’s mind doesn’t know everything. His father says it is the universe which started as a small dot and blew up into a huge space of millions of stars and planets. Henry can’t imagine this. Too much for this young person. Back he goes to Mum who tells him what she thinks is the most amazing thing: that each person is unique.
Henry can imagine this.
Shanks’s unique hand-painted mixed-media illustrations add so much interest to the verbal text, including turning the book onto its side. The varied colours add to the different things that we find interesting and amazing and stimulate readers to explore their own point of view.
This thought-provoking picture book, listed in the 2025 CBCA Book of the Year Awards Early Childhood Notables, is about ideas and wonder and has a deep philosophical message for those who wish to follow it through but is totally appropriate for young readers. I think it could also have been included in the Picture Book Notables because it will speak to a wider readership than the early childhood group.
Reviewed by Maureen Mann
