The Hello, Goodbye Window
The Hello, Goodbye Window was written by Norton Juster and illustrated by Chris Raschka. The story is told by a little girl who describes the special kitchen window at her grandparents’ house. It’s the place where she waves hello, says goodbye, and sometimes imagines whole adventures while looking through it. […]
Waffle
Waffle shows a small character who wants something but moves with uncertainty. Each hesitant action meets a crowd of tiny laughing faces, forming patterns and shapes across the pages. Typography and symbols wobble and shift, echoing the tension and movement. Words and faces interact, responding to each step, reflecting hesitation […]
Peter and the wolf
Peter and the Wolf is Chris Raschka’s retelling of Sergei Prokofiev’s classic musical tale. The story follows Peter as he ventures outside, meets animal friends, and finally comes face to face with the wolf. Raschka doesn’t just illustrate — he also plays with the text. His words are short, rhythmic, […]
Table manners
Table Manners is a collaboration between Vladimir Radunsky and Chris Raschka. The book takes a subject usually handled with stiff seriousness — etiquette — and turns it into a playful, theatrical performance. The story follows two friends as they attempt to understand the rules of polite dining, a process that […]
Like likes like
In Like Likes Like, Chris Raschka uses both words and images to quietly draw us into the world of a lonely white cat. The text is minimal, almost like a whisper, letting each word carry feeling. Meanwhile, the illustrations do a lot of the work: open spaces, subtle shifts in […]
Little black crow
Little Black Crow is a quiet, meditative book. The text moves like a gentle chant, full of simple questions addressed to the crow: Where do you go? What do you see? Do you feel lonely? The language is pared down, but the repetition and rhythm create a sense of intimacy, […]
The Cosmobiography of Sun Ra: the sound of joy is enlightening
This book isn’t a straight biography. It’s more like a riff — short bursts of words and pictures that try to catch the feeling of Sun Ra and his music. Raschka shows him as both a boy from Alabama and a man who claimed he came from Saturn, carrying sounds […]
Mysterious Thelonious
Mysterious Thelonious is Raschka’s tribute to jazz pianist Thelonious Monk. The book uses just twelve colors, lined up like the twelve notes of the scale. The short, repeating text and loose, abstract images follow the shape of Monk’s music — playful, surprising, and a little strange at first, but full […]
Boy meets girl; Girl meets boy
Boy Meets Girl / Girl Meets Boy (2004) by Christopher Raschka and Vladimir Radunsky is a playful picture book built around a simple but inventive idea. The story, featuring a boy, a girl, a green cat, and an upside-down red dog in glasses, can be read in both directions: one […]
The blushful hippopotamus
Chris Raschka’s The Blushful Hippopotamus (1996) is about a little hippo named Roosevelt. He blushes easily, especially when things go wrong or he feels clumsy. At first, his older sister teases him, and she looks so big on the page that Roosevelt seems tiny and unsure. He has a friend, […]
Charlie Parker played be bop
This book feels more like music than a story. Chris Raschka takes a few simple words — “Charlie Parker played be bop” — and mixes them with playful sounds and rhythms that bounce across the page like a saxophone solo. The text begs to be read out loud, chanted, or […]
Moosey Moose
Moosey Moose bursts with the voice of a little moose who suddenly decides: “I’m going to sit here!” He is loud, stubborn, and full of energy, and the rhythm of the words matches his mood perfectly — short, emphatic, almost like stomps on the page. Raschka’s brushstrokes echo that energy. […]
Elizabeth imagined an iceberg
Chris Raschka’s Elizabeth Imagined an Iceberg (1994) is an unusual picture book. A girl named Elizabeth rides her bike and encounters a strange woman called Madam Uff Da, who behaves in a pushy, unsettling way. Elizabeth feels uncomfortable and threatened. To cope with her fear, she imagines an iceberg—huge, cold, […]
Arlene sardine
Arlene Sardine follows a small fish with a peculiar goal: she wants to become a sardine in a can. The story traces each step of her path — she is caught, sorted, salted, smoked, and packed in oil, until her plan is realized. The handwritten text moves with her thoughts, […]
Can’t sleep
Can’t Sleep, written by Chris Raschka, is a quiet story about a little bear who just can’t fall asleep. His friend, an older bear, stays with him — talking softly, offering comfort, and reminding him that it’s okay to rest when he’s ready. The book is very gentle, almost like […]
Little tree
Little Tree brings together the quiet poem of E. E. Cummings and Chris Raschka’s unusual pictures. The words move slowly, almost like a soft chant, following a small evergreen from the forest into a family’s home. Raschka paints with sharp shapes — triangles, squares, shifting patches of color. The tree, […]
