Oooh! What a fabulous idea!! I agree that the ability to visualize and extrapolate from text is just as important as being able to decode the print. I always have difficulty with the idea of helping my girls visualize. Now I wish I had had your idea the first time I read this book!!

I guess I would want to make sure that they knew that the actual illustrations provided by Jimmy Liao were just one possible way of mapping the text to pictures — so they would know that their own pictures were equally valid.

I will keep your idea in mind for the next time I come across a new, equally imaginative picture book. (If you have another example of an imaginative picture book I could try it with, I’d love to hear about it)
Thanks so much for your thought-provoking comments. Looking forward to more!
Andrea