Review #31: Scribble

Lily (age 6):  Let's do this already...
Gracie (age 8):  "Scribble."
Lily:  By Deborah Freedman.
Isaac (age 10):  It's a super cool book.
Lily:  It's one of my favorite books in the world.  Scribble, scribble, scribble...
Dad:  So tell me about it...
Gracie:  There is a girl named Lucie and her sister named Emma.  They both draw pictures.
Lily:  Lucie has a yellow outfit, and she drew a picture of a kitty on yellow paper.  Emma has a pink outfit, and she drew a picture of a princess on pink paper.
Gracie:  They get in a fight because Emma is making fun of Lucie's kitty picture.  Then Lucie gets mad and scribbles on her sister's princess picture.
Lily:  That was mean.
Gracie:  But I think she feels sad for what she did.
Lily:  Then the yellow kitty picture grew and turned alive!
Gracie:  The kitty found Emma's picture and saw the princess.  But since Lucie had scribbled on it there was a thicket.
Isaac:  The scribbles Lucie made are the thicket.
Gracie:  The kitty wanted to rescue the princess, and so he walked right in there.
Dad:  Right into her drawing.
Lily:  The kitty was trying to save the pink princess from being asleep forever.
Dad:  Like in Sleeping Beauty.
Lily:  But he couldn't get to her because of the tangly scribbles.  The scribbles that Lucie made.
Gracie:  He got tangled up in the scribble thicket.  So Lucie followed him into the picture and had to help him get the thicket untangled.
Dad:  And to wake her, the kitty gave the princess a kiss.  Smack!  (Dad gives Lily a kiss)
Gracie:  Awww - how come Lily gets a kiss?
Lily:  Because I'm sitting on his lap.
Dad:  Smack!  (Dad gives Gracie a kiss)
Gracie:  Hee hee!
Dad:  Do you want a kiss, Isaac?
Isaac:  Aghh!
Gracie:  The kitty woke the princess up.
Lily:  And then they got married.
Dad:  Was it real?  Or was it all a dream?
Isaac:  Imagination.
Lily:  But Lucie did un-scribble the picture.
Isaac:  It's like the real world, but then it's not.  It's the real world when they are drawing the pictures.  It's not real when she goes into the picture.
Dad:  But it's a fun thought -- that you could draw a little friend who would come alive, and you could follow him around on adventures...
Gracie:  Lily does that.  She talks to her drawings.
Lily:  I also make the drawings talk back.
Dad:  How do you guys feel about people wrecking your pictures?
Lily:  Mad.  Sad.
Dad:  In our family, that's about the worst thing you can do.
Gracie:  Yep.
Dad:  Someone drawing over a picture you'd worked on?  Tragedy.  You guys are very protective of your pictures.
Lily:  You wrecked my picture!
Gracie:  Yeah, this morning I wrecked one of Lily's pictures.
Dad:  This very morning?  Oh my lands.
Lily:  She rubbed clay on it, and it left a little smudge.  And there wasn't any way to get it out.
Dad:  This book is an appropriate pick today then.
Isaac:  I know one other story that is like this one.  "The Three Pigs."
Dad:  By David Wiesner?
Isaac:  Yeah, because they go in and out of pictures too.
Gracie:  And what about "Inkheart"?
Dad:  Yep, it's also like "Inkheart" -- people hopping in and out of their own creations.
Isaac:  There's a story, but there's also a story inside a story.
Lily:  I like the kitty in this book.  He is yellow.
Dad:  It's important the way the author uses colors.
Isaac:  The colors in the book are pink and yellow.
Dad:  Pink represents Emma, and yellow represents Lucie.
Gracie:  First, the author uses it for their outfits.  Emma is wearing a pink outfit and she drew on a pink paper.  And Lucie is wearing a yellow outfit with a kitty on it, and she drew a kitty on yellow paper.
Dad:  I never noticed Lucie's outfit has a kitty on it.
Gracie:  See!
Dad:  So there are three pink things and three yellow things.  The girl, the paper, and the drawing that comes to life.
Gracie:  But part way through the book, Lucie turns pink!  See - her clothes do.  And the kitty gives the princess a yellow heart kiss.  And the princess gives the kitty pink cheeks.
Dad:  Aw, he's blushing!
Isaac:  It might be hard to draw in different styles for the different characters.
Gracie:  You'd have to draw like a five-year old!
Isaac:  But it would be fun.
Lily:  This is one of the most wonderfulest books in the world.  And I want you to read it.  Because it is wonderful.  And I don't want you to miss it.

Prince Kitty and Aurora, by Lily

Aurora, Kitty, and what their children might look like,
by Isaac


Lucie chasing after more drawings, by Gracie

Author/Illustrator: Deborah Freedman
Published, 2007: Knopf
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