Grant Innes’s illustrations for his first book, Flight of the Whirligigs, are bright, primitive, and childlike – he is like a folk-art Lucy Cousins. In the accompanying story, Grant, a painter, takes his dog to visit their friend Mazie who lives by the sea. Mazie shows them her collection of whirligigs – vibrant wooden animals with limbs that twirl in the wind – and invites Grant to help her complete her work-in-progress, a goose. A sea breeze steals over them, and Mazie predicts some magic. Soon, wind-music fills the air, and the characters start dancing. Suddenly, the whirligigs take flight. When the breeze dies, the wooden animals return to their posts, except for the goose, who soars to freedom.

The most appealing features of this book are the busy landscapes, reminiscent of Babar the Elephant, and a double-page spread that wordlessly continues the story. However, the characters look as wooden as the whirligigs, with little variety or vivacity of expression.

The target audience for this book will be excited by the bold colours, not only of the illustrations, but also of the facing pages inscribed with child-friendly prose. Innes’s text is enlivened by onomatopoeic words (the bus “putt-putt-putted its way along”), and concrete descriptions of the sights, smells, and sounds of his Maritime village. The homespun style of the illustrations, combined with the hero’s enthusiasm for painting, will encourage young readers to get out their paint boxes and explore the possibilities of the spectrum, if not to make whirligigs themselves.