Imaginary Fred is a new children’s book written by Eoin Colfer and illustrated by Oliver Jeffers.
The book itself is in white and robin egg blue, the illustrations are all simple in design, which makes for a wonderful dreamlike quality to the characters.
Fred is an imaginary friend who floats in the sky like a cloud until a lonely little boy or girl wishes for a friend and he does his best to do whatever his friend wants without complaining. Unfortunately for poor Fred his friend would always find a new friend in the real world, at which point Fred would fade and float back up into the sky, until he is needed by someone else.
When Fred meets Sam he realises that he is the friend he had always been dreaming of and they had such fun together, until Sam meets a new real friend, Sammi. Fred knew his time with Sam would then be limited as he started to fade.
Fred was incredibly surprised when he met Sammi and found out she had her own imaginary friend, Frieda, he stopped fading and became solid yet again. The four of them were great friends and formed their own band called the Quarelling Quartet (although only 2 of the friends were actually visible!).
Sam and Sammi saw less of Fred and Freida as they grew older, but Fred and Freida never faded away and floated back up to the sky, instead they remained good friends and lived in an imaginary house together.
This is a lovely and unique story. It’s aimed at slightly older children than most our books, O is only just 4 years old and has enjoyed reading the book, but I’m not sure if he quite gets the concept of an imaginary friends yet. I would say that this book is probably for a minimum age of 4 to around 7 years old. It’s definitely a lovely book to read with great concepts to introduce to younger children and of course beautiful illustrations by the wonderful Oliver Jeffers.
An imaginary friend is:
You can buy Imaginary Fred on Amazon for just over £9.00, which is a great price for a hardback copy!
Alternatively your child can enter a competition to win a copy of their very own unique story of their own imaginary friend written by Eoin Colfer and illustrated by Oliver Jeffers. Click on the PDF link below to find out more:
J x
Disclaimer: I was sent Imaginary Fred for the purpose of this review, all opinions are my own.
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