A bursting toy box is the starting point for this fantasy adventure; when mother hears the eruption and checks out the room, her only comment is to wonder bluntly where the floor is. In this cheerfully postmodernist picture storybook, words create reality, so after mother asks her question the floor disappears, turning into a vortex rather like the rabbit hole that Alice falls into. Our heroine Beo, however, manages to save herself from falling, as do her various toys scattered about the periphery of her room. Clinging to lamps, perched on drawers, they encourage a toy who is hanging on “by a thread,” and eventually a heroic rescue is achieved. Beo, god of her little world like Christopher Robin was of his toys, restores order by saying it shall be so, and a happy dance ends the story.

As these links to classic children’s books suggest, Ned Dickens’ story taps into the fantasy life of preschoolers, though in an unconventional way. The book design and zany illustrations by Graham Ross give By a Thread a very contemporary exuberance. The story is told in rhymed verse, and the playful use of typographic variation encourages reading aloud in an imaginative and expressive way. As in concrete poetry, the printed words often pictorially represent what they are describing: whispering is in small, pale type; stairs are climbed in ascending print; and a triumphal shout appears in swooping, colourful, and increasingly large letters. The last word of the story is actually on the back cover of the book.