Hurray for Imaginations!

Today's picture book highlight comes from my childhood.  Hurray for Captain Jane! by Sam Reavin with pictures by Emily Arnold McCully.  Sam Reavin was a poultry farmer and only wrote a few stories, mainly encouraged by his wife, children's author Lilian Moore.

Hurray for Captain Jane!

Published in 1971, this story depicts a young girl's imaginative journey, all sparked by a bar of soap and a wax paper hat.  A true celebration of the joy of unstructured and unsupervised play where a child's imagination is allowed to take flight; no need here for anything that beeps, talks or blinks when touched.  I am not sure this book would fly off the shelves were it in my library today, but I loved it and remember it fondly.  I read it with my own children, who have now developed their own relationship with the story.  Hurray for Captain Jane and her imagination!

Captain Jane charts a course.