Supposing...

Alastair Reid was a poet, a prose chronicler, a translator, and a traveler. Born in Scotland, he came to the United States in the early 1950s, began publishing his poems in the New Yorker in 1951, and for the next fifty-odd years was a traveling correspondent for that magazine. Having lived in both Spain and Latin America for long spells, he became a constant translator of poetry from the Spanish language, in particular the work of Jorge Luis Borges and Pablo Neruda. In his lifetime, he published more than forty books, among them a classic wordbook for children, Ounce Dice Trice, with drawings by Ben Shahn. In 2008, he published in the U.K. two career-spanning volumes, Outside In: Selected Prose and Inside Out: Selected Poetry and Translations. His Barefoot: The Collected Poems was published posthumously in 2018. The substance of Supposing... he gleaned from the many children who have influenced him, to all of whom he owes and dedicates the text.JooHee Yoon is an illustrator and printmaker committed to the art of bookmaking. She enjoys combining illustration with design whenever possible and using both traditional and industrial printing techniques for her projects. Rather than a single approach, she tries to match the tone of each project. She strives to create picture books that work on many levels and can be enjoyed by people of all ages.

“For a vivid and beguiling new edition, artist JooHee Yoon has revisited, reordered and re-illustrated Reid’s original text. The result is a flowing series of conjectures, some playful and others faintly ominous, amid pictures that all but vibrate with bold hues of papaya, orange, teal and hunter green… About some of Reid’s writing there’s a sense of dark mischief that does not so much date the text as show how virtuous and safety-oriented children’s books have become in the intervening decades. It’s hard to imagine any contemporary author being willing to suggest, let alone validate, such naughtiness as: ‘Supposing I telephoned people I didn’t know in the middle of the night and practiced my horrible sounds over the phone.’” —Wall Street Journal“The book’s voice is that of children—who wonder and imagine and suppose without (gloriously) considering the consequences… These are the voices of children who wonder what it would be like to save the day; seek solitude; imagine possibilities; defy expectations; do the opposite of what they’re told; confound (and ‘bamboozle’) adults; travel through time; keep secrets; and much more. Deliciously, there are also children who imagine the possibilities when not following the rules… Even if a lot of their literature (still) tries to represent their thoughts in sanitized, innocent ways, children are capable of ones that are cruel or unkind or stingy, like all humans, and what a breath of fresh air it must be for them to see that acknowledged in a book. They’re only thoughts after all; none of these speakers in the book act upon them. How cathartic for readers. Children contain multitudes. This book is a powerful reflection on that. I love to see Yoon’s arresting, distinctive artwork with its vivid stylishness. Here, the colors pop; the scale is often exaggerated; the compositions are visually arresting. Look closely, too, and see that the children often have mischief on their faces, as it should be.“ —Julie Danielson, Seven Impossible Things"In her transformative spin on New Yorker writer [Reid]’s 1960 child’s-eye classic, Yoon has added a girl and a dog, reordered the 'what-if' scenarios to better connect them and, brilliantly, illustrated the book as if kids themselves were the artists." —New York Times"Reid's 1960 thought experiments have lost none of their ability to jump-start flights of fancy... Some—'Supposing there were 12 of me...' or 'Supposing I taught my dog how to read...'—are fun... and others envision empowering acts like saving Dad from financial ruin or helping to recapture an escaped lion... Supposing... a new generation of readers took this invitation to heart to write themselves into different stories?" —Kirkus"Newly reissued with fresh illustrations, this book of musings alternates between a pair of little boy and little girl narrators who take turns supposing various scenarios... The illustrations resemble old-fashioned lithography, with simple shapes and backdrops, filled with bright colors and interesting textures. The pictures are large and humorous, with lots of captivating details; I certainly enjoyed leafing through its pages... The art is attractive and lively, and the open-ended nature of the questions could serve as a good writing prompt." —Susan Harari, Keefe Library, Boston Latin School (Boston, MA), Youth Services Book Review“A book filled with unexpected what-ifs (originally written in 1960), perfectly paired with JooHee Yoon’s brand-new vibrant artwork.” —Travis Jonker, 100 Scope Notes“A perfectly weird and funny book! Written in a true child’s tongue à la Ruth Krauss, these ‘supposings’ had me laughing out loud. Yoon’s art is at once cartoonish and avant-garde, making it a good match for a text that is both naive and surprisingly wise... Read it to your kids and then dream up your own supposings together!“ —The Great Green Room