I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book just wasn't a winner for me. I wasn't a fan of the illustrations and the story just wasn't executed well.

This was available to read now through NetGalley, thank you to the publishers and author for allowing people to review it.

This is such a precious story it is a perfect book to read with your young child to help encourage them to use their imaginations. All children need to use their imaginations and this story shows them how in a really simple and beautiful way.

In this book Annie asks her mom about Fairies and she is sent to her grandma who has all the fun answers for her, helping her use her imagination and see the world around her in a different way, taking something simple like the clouds and helping her see more than just a cloud.

I also must say how beautiful and bright the pictures were in this book you could clearly see imagination went into the illustrations, I loved the bunny with butterfly wings that was so precious.

Though I am a true believer in children having imagination, this book confused me. Annie asks her Mom if there are fairies. Mom tells her to ask her Grandmother. Annie does and Grandma goes on to explain about imagination. She starts with fairy dust in the garden, clouds turning into things and then it goes into soup cans for hats, pizza boxes for shields etc. If they had stayed with the fairy story I think I would have liked it a lot better. I also did not find the illustrations that appealing and don't think with the exception of 1 or 2 children would either. To me with with a book with pictures for children they have to keep them captivated and have discussions about the pictures too. I did like the Parent suggestions in the back of the book though. It does open a dialog with your child.

I can appreciate the obvious time and effort it took to put this together but unfortunately I was not able to connect with this work thematically.

*thank you to Netgalley, Senigami Publishing and the author for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review*

2.5 stars.

This book was borderline good to just ok. While the story was sweet and nice to read, about a little girl and her grandmother, and using your imagination, it felt a bit lacking in something that I can't put my finger on.

The illustrations were a bit odd and left me rather confused. In one way parts of them were really pretty to look at but other parts seemed so strange. Like a cut and paste job gone wrong. Usually this happens when two styles ofmart have been put together and not blended properly. 

So while this book isn't bad, it's not for me but I do wish it good luck with other readers.

"Annie Imagines" is a lovely children's book that captures the incredible nature of a child's imagination. With stunning illustrations, this book tells the story of a loving grandmother nurturing the creative imagination of her young granddaughter named Annie. Together they dream up a fantasy fairy world in the garden, and find images in the clouds of a man's face on the moon overlooking various animals on the grounds of a large castle. Imaginative worlds are magical places. In this book, Annie's grandmother teaches that imagination can turn ordinary things into extraordinary things, and "take you anywhere you want to go."

What a fabulous book! The pictures are amazing, colourful and so cheerful! The text is engaging and will help students and young children develop their own sense of creativity and their imagination. This book should be compulsory for all children!
To top it all, a guide helps teachers or parents use the book and provides multiple tasks!
Thank you for this lovely story and these ideal tasks! I warmly recommend Annie Imagines!

This is not the book for me. While I do believe imagination is important, I think there are other ways to promote that idea without being so... well, in-your-face, for lack of a better term. This book is not subtle at all in its message, and I think I might've enjoyed it more had it been vaguer, which would've forced me to think about it a little more.

The narrative starts off kind of weak for me, with Annie asking her mom if she believes in fairies. Mama seems to think the question is whether fairies are real, not whether she believes in them, because rather than answering the simple yes-or-no question, she pawns the kid off on her grandmother.

Grandma is kind of like a hippie fortune cookie, and the rest of the book is spent with her dispensing her wise wisdom about imagination and encouraging Annie to think creatively. It's not that it's a bad message, but, like I said, it's kind of glaring and not at all subtle. There's literally no other story in the book, other than the grandmother encouraging Annie to imagine objects in clouds or figure out what she'd do with a pile of random objects.

There are a couple of pages at the end with classroom activities (basically, just getting kids to use their imaginations the way Annie does in the book). I don't think these are necessary, given the way the "story" is done; they seem redundant.

I'm also really not a fan of the illustrations. I suspected early on that they were painted from photographic references (which is confirmed in the illustrator bio). For me, they all have this weird unrealistic reality to them; I think I would've rather seen the characters stylized a little bit, to try to get away from that uncanny quality. The illustrations are certainly colourful and match the text. But they're just not my thing.

So, while I like the overall message of the book, I think the execution is a bit heavy handed and I'm not a fan of the pictures. Kids might be more forgiving about some of these issues, though. As always, taste is subjective.