We found two noteworthy books in our family reading this week.  Geraldine’s favorite was The Pencil by Allan Ahlberg (text) and Bruce Ingman (art).  The story is about a pencil that draws a boy, and then a dog, and then a cat, and a whole world for them to live in.  Mistakes are made, so the pencil creates an eraser…but the eraser has a mind of its own.  Duhn-duhn-duhnnnnn.  Some of our favorite details were the offbeat names that the creations are given (even balls and eggs ask, “What’s my name?”) and the realistic appearance of the eraser shavings, which made you want to sweep them off the page.

The Pencil draws some interesting parallels to the biblical creation story.  In the beginning there is only the pencil—who knows where it came from?—which then starts to create and add color and name things.  The erasers are similar to the flood.  The similarities seem to end there, though.  The main difference is that the pencil means only to be accommodating and helpful, even with its intentions in creating the eraser, whereas the Judeo-Christian God is all rigid and pissed off in the first book.

Rhys’s favorite book this week was Bear’s Picture by Daniel Pinkwater (text) and D. B. Johnson (art).  If you couldn’t guess, the straightforward plot revolves around a bear painting a picture, but the clever illustrations add layers of complexity.

Two “fine, proper gentlemen” who happen by balk at the noncomformity of a bear who paints pictures.  Bear explains the elements of his abstract painting—a honey tree, a forest stream, and a hollow log—and the painting visually swallows the gentlemen (although they probably just walked off).  If you invert the final painting, you see that the abstract elements join to make a portrait of Bear.  Bonus:  his ears are the hats of the two proper gentlemen.

See what the other kids are reading this week at The Well-Read Child, host of the new weekly “what my children are reading” meme.

[ Posted in » Book Review Channel :: Graves girls read! :: Picture Book Reviews ]