Product Description

Imagine a place that makes you feel as free as a bird. Imagine a place where getting there is worth whatever it takes. Imagine a place that makes you feel like it's always been your destination. Imagine a place made out of pure imagination.

Imagine a Place is a gorgeous companion to the critically acclaimed Imagine a Night and Imagine a Day, and reminds us that imagination is powerful enough to take us anywhere we want to go. And Rob Gonsalves's exquisitely conceived paintings leave you in awe...of his imagination.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #82353 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 40 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781416968023
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From School Library Journal
Grade 2–6—The creators of Imagine a Night (2003) and Imagine a Day (2005, both S & S) offer another book to ponder and pore over. Readers are again encouraged to stretch their imaginations and question perspective and perception. Painterly acrylic panoramas, supported by lyrical text, are packed with skewed realities. On the title page, an image of a cathedral's interior transmutes into a city skyline as the pointed arches become silhouetted skyscrapers and the mottled stonework of ancient walls, buttressed ceilings, and floor become the rippled surface of the surrounding harbor and stratocumulus clouds. On another spread, the text reads, "Imagine a place…/where water is solid,/light is liquid,/sky a frozen river/flowing under your feet," and the illustration shows skaters gliding across a nighttime river, their lanterns reflecting the moonlight, and snow banks that mirror the clouds above. The sometimes esoteric text and sophisticated art play with literality: houseboats are depicted as brick-and-stone manors in giant skiffs, their verdant lawns enclosed by bow-and-stern-curved fences. This is not magical realism, but shifting realism—magical, to be sure, but not in the high-falutin', metaphysical sense. This is the magic of positive and negative space, of expectation and experimentation, of creativity and conversion. Readers will want to look, look again, discuss, and imagine.—Kathy Krasniewicz, Perrot Library, Old Greenwich, CT
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About the Author
Rob Gonsalves grew up drawing images from his imagination, but the Surrealist movement, in particular the works of Remedios Varo and René Magritte, also influenced his work. After he graduated from college, Mr. Gonsalves worked as an architect, and as a painter of trompe l'oeil murals and theater sets. After receiving an enthusiastic response at the 1990 Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition, he began painting full time, and his work continues to be highly sought after. His first picture book was Imagine a Night, and he currently lives in rural Ontario, Canada.

Sarah L. Thomson's other books include The Dragon's Son, which was named one of the best science fiction, fantasy, and horror books of 2001 by Voice of Youth Advocates; Stars and Stripes; and Imagine a Night. She lives in Maine.

Customer Reviews

Great books
We saw the artist's work at Lake Tahoe and our kids fell in love with the paintings. I highly recommend these (there are three) to all families. The verses are beautiful as well.

Rob Gonsalves is a genius
The artwork of Rob Gonsalves in the books Imagine a Place, Imagine a Day and Imagine a Night is genius. Adults and children alike will spend hours looking at his pictures. Most of his art is a beautiful but impossible image - very imaginative. For example, you might find a picture of a hiker setting out across stones on a foggy creek. Gradually the stones turn into castle spires and hikers are hopping from tower to tower.

If you ever as an adult looked back at a picture book from your childhood and found that the words were very few but your memories of that book were very detailed and vivid due to the artwork, these books will be among the best of those.

I bought an extra copy of a Rob Gonsalves book and cut it up and had the pictures laminated and hung in my high school math classroom. Every student and teacher loves them. Everyone who has ever been in the room has a favorite picture that he finds amazing.

Great book!
We have only yet to check this book out from the library, but it is in my wish list right now, I loved it! My 4 kids (ages 10-3)all loved it as well and we just sit and look at all the beautiful pictures and talk about the transitions/optical illusions that the artist made. It was well done and I am excited to read the other two, "Imagine a Day" and "Imagine a Night."
The book is not so much a story as it is a poem. It really is the beautiful artwork that goes along with the writer's simple words that makes this book so amazing.
We love it and I highly recommend it!