Review #111: Blue Chicken

Dad:  Today we're taking a look at "Blue Chicken" by Deborah Freedman.
Lily (age 8):  I wonder if she lives on a farm?
Dad:  So, tell us about this book.
Lily:  Blue Chicken is about a chicken who wanted to help paint the barn.
Gracie (age 11):  Never let a chicken help you paint.  Never.
Isaac (age 13):  They'll just mess it up.
Gracie:  There is a drawing of a farm, and the little animals in the picture come to life.
Lily:  The artist wasn't done with her painting yet.  The barn hadn't been colored in.  Then the chicken comes out of the picture and goes over to the blue paint.  Then it splashed, and she got everything blue.  Everybody in the painting got blue, all the cows, all the chickens, all the ducks.
Dad:  Oh dear.
Lily:  So the chicken runs over to a glass of water.  She throws a duck, and he plops in the bucket, and the water splashes all over the place, and everybody got washed off, and I love this page.  It's awesome.
Gracie:  The picture looks so watery.
Isaac:  Deborah Freedman is very good at watercolors.  There's one page where it looks like actual water ripples.  How would you do that?
Gracie:  I like that page.
Isaac: (continuing to flip through the pages)  And that's a really amazing picture too.  See how she can make the water look like it's tipping over and starting to spill out...
Dad:  There are so many different handlings of water in this book.  She can make water look still, and she can make it look splashy.
Isaac:  There's big splashes. And there's also little tiny drips seeping out.
Gracie:  Dribbles.
Isaac:  And puddles.
Dad:  Characters wading in water.  Characters swimming in the water.
Lily:  And rain water.
Dad:  Water is seen inside the full glass.  And it looks different than the water seen behind, through the empty glass.
Isaac:  Shadows in the water.  And reflections in the water.  She's really good at this.
Dad:  What did you guys like besides all the paintings of water?
Lily:  That duckling.
Dad:  Ducks are your favorite.
Lily:  I'm pretty sure the duck and the chicken are best friends.  The duck follows her around.  And the duck wasn't angry at the chicken.  And he let the chicken throw him into the jar.
Dad:  What if you left one of your pictures, and when you came back, more of it was finished?
Gracie:  I did that once.  One time I drew a picture of a boy running.  And I came back later...
Isaac:  Ohhhh ho ho...
Gracie:  And there was a little monster shooting bullets everywhere, climbing on his shoulder!
Isaac:  Ha ha ha hee hee ha ha hah!
Dad:  Hmm - why is Isaac laughing so hard I wonder?
Lily:  Oh yeah, that was Isaac.
Dad:  Are you saying Isaac is a "Blue Chicken"?
Lily:  Yes.
Isaac:  I was trying to finish the picture.
Dad:  Maybe that can be our new code word.  Anytime something bad happens to one of our drawings... "You... Blue Chicken!"
Gracie:  "Darn you, Blue Chicken, you!"
Dad:  Would you like your pictures to come to life?
Lily:  If I were going to draw a picture to come alive, I would draw a duck.  A trained duck.  A duck that is trained to eat warmed-up broccoli.  Then we could eat it together.
Dad:  You guys know who Deborah Freedman is, right?
Lily:  She did "Scribble"!
Gracie:  This book is so similar to "Scribble."  They each have themes of color.  They each have pictures of animals that come to life.
Lily:  She takes a similar idea and twists it.
Gracie:  She's creative.  Who else would have thought of a Blue Chicken?
Lily:  I love this book like the dickens.  The dickens and the chickens.

blue chicken, by Isaac

chicken splashes duckling, by Lily

splash-off between blue duckling & orange chicken, by Gracie

Author/Illustrator: Deborah Freedman
Published, 2011: Viking
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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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