My Best Friend Is As Sharp As a Pencil: And Other Funny Classroom Portraits

Here's the perfect back-to-school gift for budding artists. Like the creator's previous picture book, My Dog Is as Smelly as Dirty Socks, this picture book encourages children to be creative and make their own object portraits. It's a fun activity for home or for the classroom. You can even check out portraits made by other readers in the "kids' gallery" of author Hanoch Piven's Web site, www.pivenworld.com—and while you're at it, send in your own!

Learn how to create a funny librarian, a colorful art teacher, or your best friend by seeing how one girl does it in this simple, playful picture book that's comprised of portraits made of objects. Once the girl has talked about—and drawn—the key figures in her school, she ends with the pièce de résistance—a class portrait!

Hanoch Piven is the illustrator of several children's books, including My Dog Is as Smelly as Dirty Socks; What Presidents Are Made Of, a Child Magazine Best Book, a Parents' Choice Award recipient, and an ABA Kids' Pick of the List; and What Athletes Are Made Of. His work has appeared in a number of publications, including Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, and the New Yorker. Hanoch Piven received a Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators for his object portrait of Barbra Streisand, which appears on the cover of Faces: 78 Portraits from Madonna to the Pope.

Over the past five years, Hanoch has been giving "drawing with objects" workshops in the United States and abroad. He works in classrooms, hospitals (in art therapy programs), and museums. Learn more about him at www.pivenworld.com.