Title: The Invention
Author: Julia Hubery
Illustrator: James Munro
Publisher: Graffeg
Genre: Children’s picture book
Book format: Paperback
Sweet Strawberries: 
Description: Caretaker’s daughter Fili is sad to see her neighbours bustle in and out, too busy to talk. But will feeling sad help – or is a bit more imagination needed?
Fili gets to work creating an Invention that just might build bridges between them all.
*Free copy provided by publisher for review…
Review: This is such a brilliant story! Fili lives in a small space in a big building, a flat, with her dad who looks after the building. Every day Fili sees people walking in and out of the block of flats, and everyday everyone is silent, keeping to themselves and not talking to anyone. Fili wants to change things so she starts making an invention. Every day she works on building more and more of the Invention, and slowly people start to talk to her, asking her about it. This paperback is filled with thick matt pages of some great illustrations and text.
I really enjoyed this story, showing what life can be like living in a block of flats where you hardly know anyone, an unfortunate reality for many today. Fili doesn’t like seeing all the glum looking people just walking by silently so she begins making an invention. As she creates her invention, put together from all sorts of random objects, people start to notice and day by day she gets more people interacting with her, asking what the invention will be and when it will be ready.
I like how the illustrations in this story reflect, at first, the atmosphere of the people in the building. Most of the illustrations are a dull colour, showing how everyone is just a dull background person living their mundane lives. But some things including Fili are colourful, making her stand out against the sad looking building and she feels alive compared with everyone and everything else. As the story moves on and more people begin to notice Fili’s invention and begin to talk with her, there is more colour to the people and the pages in general. The illustrations are brilliant, I really love the way Fili looks, her happy expressions and the way everyone else looks at first, glum, staring at their phones, and later more animated and happy as the story moves on.
The ending is really clever, I love how everyone gets involved and how Fili’s invention works in the most perfect way, even if it still makes little sense. The story really is a brilliant one, ending with a positive note as the flats’ occupants focus more on Fili and her invention rather than their own lives. There are lots of interesting things to spot in the pictures like what the various people are doing in the flats and I just love how happy this book made me feel after reading it. It’s definitely a positive book, showing how even in glum circumstances there’s always something positive that can happen, how people can be brought together. Definitely a picture book I’d recommend.
What do you think of this book? Do you have friendly chats with your neighbours? Let me know what you think in the comments below 🙂
The Strawberry Post 