Shauna Darling Robertson: Saturdays at the Imaginarium

Step out of your daily grind and into Shauna’s imaginarium – where humdrum is injected with colour, feelings and emotions with clarity, and empathy is just how and where you need it to be. You know those somethings you catch out of the corner of your eye but which disappear when you try to look them in the face? Here they are pinned down and given names.

This book is brimful of fantastical reality, a universe of exploration into worlds of words; words that float and sink and climb and swing, beckon, entice, challenge and sing. Exciting words, gentling words, lit along their paths with Shauna’s delightful sense of humour.

This is a fantastic work in every conceivable way, and what is more inside its covers I have found what is in my opinion THE PERFECT POEM (below) – but you can count on finding your own perfect poem there, too.

Published by Troika and beautifully illustrated by Jude Wisdom, this is definitely a winner for the classroom and home – HIGHLY recommended!

The Dreamcatcher

The old man gave me

this weird looking thing.

A stringy, beady

feathery thing.

A dreamcatcher, he whispered.

Yeah, whatever.

Still, I did as he said,

hung it over my bed

and that very night

I caught my first one

brim-filled

with treasures –

gold, silver, rubies, rings.

Nice and all,

but I’m not what you’d call

huge on jewels

so I held out for another

and sure enough, on night two

I was blessed with adventures –

castles and dragons,

galloping stallions, damsels

in varying degrees of distress.

Come night three, I confess

I was hooked

and from that moment on

I spent most of my days

killing time till day’s end

and then sinking to sleep

and waking at dawn to check my net

for a freshly-snared dream.

Six months in, I’m now the proud owner

of five-hundred-and-fifty-eight.

Some creepy, some soothing

some crazy, some straight.

But lately my dreams feel hemmed in,

suspended up there

in my stringy, beady, feathery thing

so I’ve hatched a plan for their urgent release

and tonight’s the night I’ll let my dreams fly.

Thing is, I’m thinking I might go with them.

So please keep this quiet.

Goodnight

and goodbye.