Your guide to activities and fun things to do with your preschoolers, toddlers and kids in Washington, DC

I remember the first time I laid eyes on author and illustrator Chris VanAllburg's The Mysteries of Harris Burdick.  I was in sixth grade and my teacher was telling us about the book and describing our writing task where we were to choose an illustration as a foundation for a short story.  There was something about the cover that drew me in without even looking at the other pictures. In the middle of a body of water laid a railroad track on a bed of rocks that contained a single rail cart, holding four boys with their backs to me.  The sail attached to the cart was full, as if being pushed by the wind, and in the distance, the sun seemed to be setting.

Illustrations titled Captain Tory, The Harp, The Third Floor Bedroom, and The House on Maple Street are beautiful, haunting, complex, and quite mysterious.  Each is a conversation starter since Chris Van Allsburg (The Polar Express, Zathura, and Jumanji) provides only a sentence about what each is about.  The rest is left to your imagination.

It is no surprise that over the years, The Mysteries of Harris Burdick have inspired many individuals, young, old, and famous, to write stories, compose songs, and create animations using the illustrations as inspiration.  Stephen King wrote about The House on Maple Street in a story collection called Nightmares & Dreamscapes.  

The brief captions and captivating illustrations are still as intriguing to me as they ever were when I was 12.  It is a pleasure to sit down with my tattered book, with my children on either side, and fantasize about the stories behind the pictures.

For more information about The Mysteries of Harris Burdick and to view some of the illustrations from the book, visit the website.