Our next Book Club selection invites us into a world where imagination takes extraordinary forms.
In PLUNGE!, Corinne Whitaker brings together richly detailed illustrations and playful, questioning verse to create a visual journey that rewards curiosity. Faces stretch into unexpected shapes. Flowers become part of a figure’s identity. Eyes emerge from elaborate arrangements of color, texture, and curling lines. Each spread offers something new to discover—and a reason to linger before turning the page.
It is a beautifully illustrated book, full of personality and visual surprises. Its appeal begins with the pleasure of looking: following a delicate line, noticing a tiny face within a larger form, or discovering how an unexpected combination of colors holds an entire composition together. As we spend time with these images, questions begin to emerge. What are we looking at? What makes a face familiar? How much can a form change before we stop trying to name it and begin experiencing it on its own terms?
These questions make PLUNGE! an engaging choice for our Book Club, particularly for artists and readers who enjoy exploring the relationship between imagination and perception.
The Pleasure of Looking Closely
Corinne’s illustrations offer an abundance of intricate detail. Spirals, stripes, rounded shapes, botanical elements, and elaborate patterns gather into beings that seem to have their own peculiar logic. Some appear almost sculptural, with surfaces that suggest layered ribbons, carved ornament, or assembled fragments. Others have a delicate, drawn quality, their fine lines extending outward like tendrils.
Color gives each encounter a distinct character. Warm oranges and reds sit beside turquoise, yellow, green, and cream. Elsewhere, a quieter combination of blue, pale pink, and gray creates a more contemplative presence. The variety encourages us to notice how color changes our emotional response, even when the subject remains difficult to define.
One particularly striking image brings together a human face and large yellow flowers. Petals spread across the figure, while orange forms flow around a visible green eye. There is tenderness in the face, but also ambiguity. Are the flowers concealing it, protecting it, or becoming part of it? The image leaves room for each reader’s interpretation.
That openness is part of the book’s pleasure. We can appreciate the compositions immediately, then return to them and discover details we missed.
Faces That Return Our Gaze
Eyes appear throughout the illustrated pages, often enlarged or placed in unexpected relationships to the rest of a figure. They give these unfamiliar beings a point of connection. However unusual the surrounding forms become, a gaze can hold our attention.
Some expressions seem watchful. Others appear puzzled, amused, solemn, or delightfully difficult to read. These are impressions that may change from one viewer to another. A figure that feels comical to one reader might seem thoughtful to someone else.
For our Book Club, that difference offers a wonderful starting point. We can look at the same illustration and discover that we have experienced it very differently. The conversation becomes an opportunity to understand how memory, mood, and personal associations influence what we see.
Corinne’s imagery encourages this kind of attentive exchange. The longer we look, the more we have to bring into the conversation.
Language With Its Own Creative Energy
Alongside the illustrations, short passages of verse give the book movement and rhythm. Corinne uses direct invitations, unexpected turns of phrase, and playful combinations of sounds. The language urges us toward exploration while leaving space for uncertainty.
The presentation gives both image and text room to work. In the spreads shared here, richly populated illustrations face black pages carrying spare white lettering. The contrast creates a natural pause. Our attention moves between the visual complexity of the artwork and the concentrated energy of the words.
Reading the passages aloud offers another way into the book. Their sounds can bring out humor, momentum, and emphasis that we might overlook when reading silently. Returning to the illustration afterward may reveal a connection we had not noticed before.
Together, words and images create a conversation that the reader is invited to continue.
Making Room for the Unexpected
A recurring invitation in PLUNGE! is to loosen our reliance on familiar patterns. Its beings bring together elements that we would ordinarily separate. Their forms make room for unlikely combinations and unfinished explanations.
For artists, this can be a useful reminder of the possibilities within experimentation. We sometimes dismiss an emerging idea because it does not yet fit the work we know how to make. We may feel the need to understand it before allowing ourselves to explore it.
Spending time with Corinne’s images offers an opportunity to practice a different response: staying curious a little longer. An unfamiliar shape can become the beginning of an investigation. A surprising combination can suggest a new direction. Something initially awkward may contain the detail that makes a work distinctive.
The book gives us plenty to consider about our own creative habits, while keeping the experience lively through color, humor, and visual invention.
An Invitation to Our Book Club
As you explore PLUNGE!, take your time with the illustrations. Choose a spread that catches your attention and notice where your eye travels first. Then look again. What appears at the edges? Which details hold the composition together? Does the accompanying language change the way you experience the figure?
Bring one image or passage into our conversation. You might share an unexpected association, a question, or simply a detail that gave you pleasure. There is room for thoughtful interpretation and for the uncomplicated joy of discovering something wonderfully strange.
Our next Book Club selection celebrates that willingness to explore. Through its beautiful illustrations and inventive language, PLUNGE! gives us a chance to pause, look closely, and let our imaginations respond.
Explore PLUNGE! by Corinne Whitaker and enjoy the book online:
Discover more of Corinne’s creative world at giraffe.com.
Which illustration will you return to—and what will you discover the second time?
Stay inspired!
Viviana Puello
