The Imagineer by Christopher Cheng illustrated by Lucia Masciullo

These objects of Grandpa’s—obsolete and out-of-fashion—are valued for the way they have fulfilled a need at a particular time and revered for the creativity of invention. Old things are interesting ...  Reading Time

Penny is an inventor. Penny is a maker. Penny loves to design interesting contraptions. She makes wonderful inventions but their apartment is very small. Then Penny is taken to visit her grandfather. His spacious house is filled with wonderful things from the past - things Penny has never seen. There is a wall mounted telephone; a pump organ; and a mechanical butter churn. Then Penny steps inside her grand father's shed and she is blown away. 

"And Penny was sure that these thingamajigs and whatchamacallits and fandanged contraptions ... would be useful."

The final fold out page will make you gasp when you see the way Penny has combined so many wonderful things found in her grandfathers shed into her new travelling machine. This is a page that you will want to explore very closely. 

I am not sure if I am correct but I think The National Library of Australia commission our well known Australian children's authors and illustrators to produce books which explore parts of their extensive collection. In the book I talked about yesterday Jane Jolly explored the history of Sikh's in Australia. In this book all of the objects from the National Library are carefully referenced with their catalogue number so you can explore further.  This makes for a rich resource which is sure to be very useful for Primary school classes who study history.

Taking a close look at the cover. Readers can anticipate the design and make or STEM aspect of this story but it is also clear the character is a child as evidenced by the letter ‘m’ in crayon. 

Reading this book is a rich experience. There are themes of perseverance; imagination; problem solving; curiosity; and inter-generational relationships.  I really appreciated the rich vocabulary - words such as massive; miniscule; flabbergasted; phantasmagorical; and pondered. And there are also delicious invented words such as incredibleacous; stupendorific; and whatchamacallits. The illustrations are carefully positioned on each page use a consistent and aesthetically pleasing colour palette. The end papers invite careful study. 

It is fun to explore the eclectic collection of treasures on the final pages such as 1907 wine and jelly press; the house fire engine from 1890; and the sad iron from 1907.

Chris Cheng has a trailer with terrific sound effects on his web site.  Here is a set of detailed teachers notes. 

Thinking about the theme of this book as an exploration of history through objects I also found this wonderful resource from the UK - Teaching History with 100 Objects. 

This book reminded me of a very old book - The Weird things in Nana's house.

You might also explore Bamboozled and Australian Kids Through the Years:

Bamboozled

Australian Kids Through the Years

If you are using The Imagineer with a group of older students try to find this picture book:

I think the history themes are the main focus of this book but you might think of The Imagineer as a book about STEM and inventors and so you could hunt for these:

The Imagineer is a 2022 CBCA Notable Picture Book.