The boy: His stories and how they came to be by Oliver Jeffers

HarperCollins, 2018. ISBN: 9780008294342. 168pp., hbk.
In 2004, Oliver Jeffers set out to do a painting of someone trying to do something impossible - a boy catching a star with a butterfly net - and that idea evolved not only into the book How to catch a star but into a series of four stories including Lost and found, The way back home and Up and down.
Now collected into one collection, this book also offers a unique look behind the scenes at the development of each book. As well as a letter from Jeffers himself explaining how the series grew (and may still do so, although that is unlikely), it contains more than 100 distinctive sketches, notes and ideas that he has chosen from his archives that show the thoughts, events and incidents that shaped the stories.
Apart from its inherent beauty, this book has much to offer about how stories grow in the minds of their creators, giving it an appeal and a use far beyond the target audience of the original stories themselves.
Barbara Braxton