I discovered the gorgeous and delightful The Great Kettles: A Tale of Time by Dean Morrissey at my local St. Vincent de Paul thrift store recently. My kids and I have a great routine at the thrift store. We fill our cart with any book that looks like it might be good for the library and then we head over to the furniture section of the store, find some hard chairs, sit down and pre-read every picture book, and do research on the chapter books. Then, we separate the goats from the calves and cull the herd until we have a reasonable number of books for purchase. (Don’t worry, we are respectful and we carefully re-shelve all of the discards.)

The illustration in this one immediately got my attention, but since it had a longish amount of text, I handed the book to my seventeen-year-old engineering-type son to preview while I read through a massive stack of shorter picture books. Michael is not much of a fiction reader and even less of a picture book reader. This one, however, grabbed hold of him, and he insisted that it come home with us. Then, when I was getting ready to run it through our intake process and just shelve it, he stopped me and insisted that I take the few necessary minutes and let myself fall in love with it too. Boy, was he right!

The writing is lovely, the story creative, and the illustration is museum-worthy. I am shocked that it did not at least get a Caldecott honor! You can see what did win and get honored in 1997 instead at the Biblioguides Caldecott resource, here. 

Joey’s family has moved to a new home, and he is not excited about it. He misses his best friend and isn’t excited about the new town and the new house. Until a neighbor stops by to tell his mother about this new house and the old professor who used to live in it. The professor was a mad scientist and the attic was his lab. 

Joey investigates the attic and finds something that takes him on a wildly imaginative adventure. The story is clever, fun, and wholesome. The illustration is lush and incredibly detailed. The adventure resolves perfectly. 

As it turns out, this is one of several books in a series of picture book adventures drawn and narrated by Dean Morrissey. There are two more Joey books and several other related books. I only own this one, but I plan to track down the others. 

This picture book would be lovely for anyone, but particularly great for boys who love adventure. In a way, it reminds me of Dinotopia or the Torben Kuhlmann books.