Poverty is the main theme of this picture book, but it is also the story of a young girl who, because her parents can't pay the bills at their home, has had to move across town to an area of tower blocks and people she doesn't know. At first she feels this doesn't matter as her parents love her, and that is the important thing. But she finds herself sad and lonely as she wanders the streets, and in the cold and wet, she comes to feel that no one sees her anymore. Slowly, she has become 'invisible'. People pass her by. But then she begins to see other invisible people - people who are doing things. An old woman who plants pretty flowers in old tin cans, a man who sleeps on a park bench and feeds the birds, a refugee boy mending a bike, and so, she begins to help these other invisibles, and as they help each other, they gradually become more visible and this cheerful helping begins to change the community to one of caring and love. 'Isabel had made a difference.' It is the illustrations in this amazing, beautiful picture book that are so important, though. All through the cold and snow of Isabel's loneliness and sadness, the colours are greys and whites and blacks with tiny bits of colour occasionally, but by the time that the invisibles have become visibles, the colours and throngs of people have become full of vibrancy and life. An afterward from the author explains about his own childhood living in a cold caravan with his parents and brother because they were poor, and his personal feelings about becoming invisible are very much to the fore in this very special book.