Elise Hurst's The Storytellers Handbook is a marvelous volume of intricately rendered illustrations expressly intended to serve as doorways to creativity. In a foreword, Neil Gaiman sets the stage with a welcoming tale of his own--a story about stories. Hurst then issues an invitation to readers to "fire your imagination," with her art offering "fragments--pieces of story, intriguing characters and animals, strange lands, and mythical beings." More than 100 pages of Hurst's detailed and fanciful art include outlandish structures, never-before-seen flora, "emotions," "possibilities, and many things out of place and out of time." Hurst intersperses her scenes with statements meant to encourage dreaming, storytelling and creativity. It's a splendid compendium with "no rules and no set stories... but so many peculiar ingredients waiting" within! --Lynn Becker, reviewer, blogger and children's book author