The Door That Had Never Been Opened Before, a timeless new classic

The Door That Had Never Been Opened Before is an illustrated book with a look. It’s tactile appearance makes you reach out and touch the flat pages within the book as if you want to open the door or flick the characters to see if they’re drawn on a spring and move if you push just a little bit. The story is timeless, and a child’s first encounter with an age-appropriate M.C. Escher illustration. Combine the two and there’s a trippy dippy creative real-along illustrated book that will have the younger ones laughing while you’re reading it, and place a wide, silent grin on the older kids that pick the book up for some alone time when you’re not around.

The Grunions are the kids in the mansion, a massive abode that has dozens of rooms on multiple floors. Sheila is the girl in the yellow dress who has tried every key that she’s ever found in hopes of locking or unlocking all of the doors in the house. Her cousin, Gerald has the blue shirt and is intent on keeping all of the doors closed. His twin sister Geraldine is a chaos agent who runs recklessly about the house and will do anything to the opposite of what her brother wants.

Their adventures around the house reach a breaking point when Geraldine finds a hammer and charges at the mysterious red door. Gerald is ‘hiding’, in a very obvious manner outside of the door, but their collision makes the hammer fly out of her hands, causing a small hole in the paneling. Suddenly, out of the gap grows a flower, that’s followed by a massive weed that grows at breakneck speeds around the mansion. The weed chases them through the house until the three of them end up at the only safe place in the house, in front of the door that’s never been opened.

It’s a massive red door with thick yellow framing around it and a big yellow lock. The weed has trapped Gerald on his back, revealing the key to the red door that he’d been hiding from Geraldine. Sheila turns the key and the three youth see a massive Narnia-type world in front of them with many other doors, complete with keys and various other fantastical elements.

So, it’s a story about curiosity and overcoming your fears, I’ve seen this before, what makes it special, asks the dubious reader. For The Door That Had Never Been Opened Before it starts and ends with the art. The book’s cover grabs your attention and that energy carries through the pages as the trio go on their journey. The art has a tactile, 3-D appearance due to how it was created, most likely using ink, and cardboard cutouts, and then having them glued into various poses in the scenes. The result is a feeling that you can bend the characters on the pages or that the wind would move them if the window were left open.  It plays a trick on your brain, especially those younger readers, who know that they’re looking at a flat surface, but that the images feel 3-D. In a way it’s akin to those chalk drawings that you see online that make you want to jump over them, because it looks like a vortex that will suck people into it.

Even within the pages, it has an ebb and flow that distorts how readers interpret the collage. A two-page spread might be one with a scene where all of the characters doing something together. A one-page scene could have a view of three floors of the mansion with one character doing various things in each of them.  A different one-page has close-ups of some characters, while another one is shown much smaller, giving it the illusion that they’re farther away. This also adds to the illusion that the rooms vary in size. The massive staircase is illustrated from above the children’s vantage point, which allows you to look down the stairs, again, even though this is a 2-D book.

The text is also brief and playful, which allows the art to do its thing. The size and thickness of the font vary from page to page which makes it perfect for those read-aloud or storytime readings. The Door That Had Never Been Opened Before is an illustrated book that age four through seven will love. They’ll wiggle and whisper to themselves about what they think will happen when they first hear the book. They’ll look at the art, think about it and wonder if they can create something as trippy as that. Older audiences, or those that have sat through the book two or more times will be able to latch onto the meaning and have age-appropriate conversations about overcoming their fears. It’s a lesson book, yes, but more than that, it’s a front-facing fun book on an adventure that some kids are having, done with excellent art.

The Door That Had Never Been Opened Before is by Mrs. And Mr. Macleod and is available on Union Square Kids, a subsidiary of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

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