by Moe Zilla

Created on: February 28, 2010

The Tunnel is a strange book. Its story is simple, and small parts of it feel familiar. But it remains absolutely unpredictable, with some of the most imaginative drawings I've ever seen in a children's book. A little girl likes reading and dreaming, while her brother plays outside with his friends, "throwing and kicking, roughing and tumbling." The two always fight and argue, until one day they end up together in a scary vacant lot.

The brother disappears down into a dark tunnel. And then he never comes back...

The drawings by Anthony Browne are very original. Early on there's a funny illustration of the boy crawling into his sister bedroom at night - wearing a wolf mask, so he can frighten her when she wakes up. And on another page he stands defiantly, - arms folded, wearing a soccer sweater - in front of a brick wall. But on the same page there's a picture of his sister, standing in front of a complicated illustration of a blooming tulip. "In every way they were different," Browne writes in his text - but it's his illustrations that convey the same message in an abstract way, almost like conceptual art.

The little boy's sister "was frightened of the tunnel and so she waited for him to come out again." But she finally gives up and climbs into the tunnel herself, finding it dark, damp, slimy and scary. At the other end is a strange wood which then transforms into a dark forest. The picture almost looks like a Salvador Dali painting, with realistic tree trunks that are lumpy with curvy burls.

The trees assume scary shapes, like animals that are trying to grab her. She finds her brother - turned to stone - but he comes back to life when the little girl hugs him. When they reach home, the mother asks if everything is all right between the two of them. The girl just smiles at her brother, and he smiles back, silently acknowledging the secret adventure they've both shared.

Presumably they never tell their mother about the scary tunnel - but that's not really the point. Childhood is full of mysteries, but in this story it's just the context for a larger story about relationships. The brother and sister are different, but their exciting adventure brings them together. So maybe it's possible for everyone to come together - even boys and girls who are really different.

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