[Saturday Reads] The Wild Imagination Of The Hopeful Disadvantaged

Myra here.

Every Saturday we hope to share with you our thoughts on reading and books. We thought that it would be good practice to reflect on our reading lives and our thoughts about reading in general. While on occasion, we would feature a few books in keeping with this, there would be a few posts where we will just write about our thoughts on read-alouds, libraries, reading journals, upcoming literary conferences, books that we are excited about, and just book love miscellany in general.

Adrian Simcox Does NOT Have A Horse (Amazon | Book Depository)

Written by Marcy Campbell Foreword by Corinna Luyken
Published by Dial Books (2018)
ISBN: 0735230374 (ISBN13: 9780735230378). Borrowed from Singapore NLB Overdrive. Book photos taken by me.

Chloe, called Miss SmartyPants by her mother (and not always in an amused manner), is fed up with Adrian Simcox who tells anyone who would listen that he has a horse.

Clearly, he has an overactive imagination as evidenced by his frequent daydreaming, as seen in the image above. But Chloe is annoyed each time Adrian holds court among the credulous younger children that he has a horse with a “white coat and a golden mane.”

Chloe strikes me as someone with an unyielding moral compass, a clear-eyed sense of right and wrong – and she is unafraid to articulate it. She can not abide that Adrian Simcox is clearly uttering an untruth, and no one seems to call him out for it.

It took a short trip to the more disadvantaged side of town, led by Chloe’s mother in the pretext of walking their dog, for Chloe to see beyond lies, half-truths, and the struggling dignity of someone who has nothing but their unbridled imagination to see him through.

This is a book that totally disarmed me. While I have read and enjoyed quite a few picturebooks that deal with poverty and homelessness, this one takes the narrative (and art) to a whole new level of complexity, depth, and nuance. One of my favourite picturebook reads in 2019. Do take the time to check out Fats’ review of this book as well.