Something Big
aemworks Publishing / 16 December 2022

Something Bigby Jenna and Avery Wasylkowski, Illustrated by A.E. MathesonPublished by aemworks PublishingReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$11.95 ISBN 9-78177-980702 Illustrator/publisher A.E. Matheson has done something big. She’s teamed whimsical illustrations and a fanciful conversation lifted from “real-life” (I’m assuming, as the front cover declares the story’s a “conversation” between Jenna and Avery Wasylkowski), and created a delightful—and most unusual!—Christmas-related story that spotlights childhood imagination and belief. I hadn’t even reached the first page of text before I was mesmerized: the book opens with a two-page, full-bleed spread of a green dragon with translucent wings chained to charcoal-coloured boulders. His eyelids are heavy, smoke vapours from wide nostrils, and one of his three grey horns appears like a party hat atop his fringy head. This well-crafted image inspires curiosity: what exactly is this clawed creature? Turn the page, and one enters a completely different scene: a realistic family breakfast with a mother, father and son around a kitchen table. Here, too, I’m slow to flip the page, even though the opening text’s compelling: “So? Any thoughts on what you’re asking Santa for Christmas?” (We don’t know which parent’s asking this question, and this interesting lack of attribution’s another trait that sets…