Synopsis
Young readers can join the narrator as she brings her imagination to life with pencils and crayons, including playful monsters and living oceans, in a creative introduction to the artistic process.
Reviews
Kindergarten-Grade 3. This collection of poems and illustrations captures a young artist's feelings about what she draws as well as the act of drawing. Frustrations are mentioned ("But sometimes.../There are bad times,/And I go away under the table,/And scribble everyone away"), but the emphasis is on the joy of creation ("And then/Another time.../A rainbow!"). The accompanying paintings in pencil and watercolor, similar to Clement Hurd's work, are energetic, expressive, and colorful, with a childlike quality. A red mouselike creature with yellow wings (the artist's muse?) appears in almost every picture. The idea of the artist as creator and controller of her own reality may not be accessible to young children; however, a teacher might use this book to prepare a class for a creative session. Miriam Cohen's No Good in Art (Greenwillow, 1980) is more immediately relevant to a child's feelings; David McPhail's Moony B. Finch, the Fastest Draw in the West (Western, 1994) tells a funny story of an artist who literally creates his own reality; and Eric Carle's Draw Me a Star (Philomel, 1992) also celebrates the joy of creation.?Pam Gosner, formerly at Maplewood Memorial Library, NJ
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
A young artist experiences different moods as she draws monsters, people, flowers, and forest creatures. On the opening page, our young illustrator is talking on the phone, apparently to a friend who wants to join her in a day of drawing, so they can be ``alone together.'' Children may be confused, looking for this friend in human form, for it turns out to be the muse-like mouse character with wings that impishly cavorts across the pages. Two rambling poems--or one long poem with two headlines, ``WITH JUST ONE PENCIL'' and ``WARNING!''- -comprise the text, about a girl who surprises herself by drawing whatever comes to mind--beautiful bugs, her own hand, a ``bad times'' drawing in which she scribbles everyone away, or the splashy lines of a rainbow. The believably childlike drawings exuberantly celebrate the creative process of a pint-sized artist thankfully not confined to rigid directions or staying within the lines. They burst with color and ``Flowers stretching out . . . /Fish, growing to the corners,/Frogs, blooming past the edges''- -in other words, the limitless possibilities of the imagination, where insects wave good-bye and a blob of brown becomes a friendly old gentleman reaching out of the page with a rose. (Picture book. 3-6) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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