Sunday, October 30, 2011  Are Harris Burdick's chronicles too
mysterious?  It's a new book by fourteen "alleged authors" of
tales behind drawings in a style very similar to Chris Van
Allsburg's, originally published as a picture book in 1984, but
apparently created and captioned by a mysterious artist named
Harris Burdick decades earlier. Handsell that.  The Brattle
Theatre was full a few nights ago with people eager to hear from
a distinguished panel about The Chronicles of Harris Burdick. It
was an audience made up almost entirely of adults (one teenaged
audience member faux-huffed when that was pointed out), and my
sense is that many of us were, in one way or another,
"children's lit people." This thing could be meta-children's-lit
enough to implode on itself.  But I suspect it isn't.  Look at
it this way: it's fourteen authors who are all different kinds
of awesome, each responding to a writing prompt in the form of a
picture and a caption. It's like a game, and I hope teachers
will let their students try