Hotel Fantastic

This surreal picture book is the work of Thomas Gibault, a French artist and designer now living in Montreal. He has created a completely fantastical world inside an unusual hostelry.

On the opening page, a neatly dressed boy sits atop a sign welcoming us to the Hotel Fantastic. We enter into a vacation destination chock-a block with dinosaurs, pirates, sea creatures and other beings whose origins we can only guess at.

Whatever need a guest might have, the Hotel Fantastic caters to it:

“Those who fly will have access to the Sky Rooms.” Here we have a witch, an alien in a small space ship, and a back-to-front griffin with a lion’s head and wings on its back end ready to bed down.

“Our restaurant is world-famous. Come to the second floor to taste the delicious cuisine of Raymundo and Georgio.” The invitation is followed by the restaurant’s recipe for grilled glubor, which ends with the instructions to cook by “blasting everything with dragon’s breath”.

On various pages of the book we see a hand-drawn wanted poster for something called a Soror-Horribilis. (Does anyone remember their Grade 10 Latin?)

The entertainment in the book is in the neon-bright illustrations. The text is just a device to move us from scene to scene. The eye moves around each spread trying to take in all the amazing beings. Their antics in the swimming pool, the fitness room and even while being treated in the hotel’s medical facility offer a lot to pore over. I especially liked the view of the ballroom (which “is open all hours of the day and night”). The image of robots, Vikings and fairies boogying away in a space entirely coloured in many shades of pink is dominated by a huge silvery disco ball.

In the fashion of Dr. Seuss’ And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street the narrative is brought up short when we find out that this has all been a game of the boy’s imagination using big sister’s dollhouse and a variety of small plastic toys. Furthermore, the Soror-Horribilis we have been told to watch out for throughout is very unhappy about yet another invasion of her possessions by her little brother. I think perhaps the book would have been more successful if it had been left entirely in the realm of fantasy rather than being brought down to earth with this last device.

Kids who like monsters and superheroes will have fun giving Hotel Fantastic a once-over, but it is an additional purchase for most library collections.