King Jack and the Dragon by Peter Bently and illustrated by Helen Oxenbury (Dial Books, 2011) fits in my self-imposed description of a perfect picture book: the text and the pictures are both required to tell the full story.
Jack, Zack, and Jack’s baby brother Caspar are knights fighting dragons, planning to spend all night in their wonderful fort. Of course, when a “giant” comes to take Zack home, the illustrations help us see it’s a parent figure, and when Jack remains alone in his fort, the scary sounds and sights are also revealed to be their true nature in the illustrations.
King Jack’s story shows how a child’s imagination can run away with him, something my similarly-minded son can relate to. The illustrations are classic, and the rhyming text is so well done that one doesn’t even notice that it’s rhyming (another sign of “perfect” for a parent-child read-aloud).
