Ready to Dream Book

A girl and her mother travel to Australia for a site-seeing vacation. The girl is an artist but also a perfectionist and struggles with accepting her work when "something goes wrong" (such as the airplane bumps making her clouds look brown instead of white or gray). But when she meets Pauline, an Aboriginal artist, Pauline teaches her how to view those "imperfections" as the soul of the piece coming through, and how each reflects the heart of the subject she is trying to capture in her work. It's a great message and along the way you'll encounter much of Australia's diverse wildlife. I wish I had enjoyed the illustrations more, especially since they are done by an Aboriginal artist so I feel they must be very authentic, but they were just not my cup of tea. Still, I recommend this to budding artists, to those Type-As who need to remember that sometimes going with the flow is best, and to those seeking picture books about Australia.