A pencil and an eraser are always fighting when suddenly, they are able to discover what happens when they work together. ( )

love the play between writing and erasing/pencils and eraser ( )

An eraser stands confidently against a blank white page, asserting it’s “just the way I like it.” However, a pencil believes otherwise, popping in and drawing “squiggles” here and “smudges” there, until annoyed Eraser chases Pencil away (“No pencil can mess with me”). But playful Pencil’s sticking around—and, after some humorous sketches, the writing utensil gradually fills the whole page with graphite. Poor Eraser’s dismayed (“I’ll never be able to fix all of this!”), but the pink polyhedron’s movements create shapes in Pencil’s mess, like a sun, planets, and a spaceship to escape the slate-gray page. However, back on unblemished paper, could Eraser be bored? Thankfully, Pencil returns, and, working together, they happily make something special. Eraser’s commentary and exhortations make up the bulk of the spare, lively text, while Amato’s illustrations—a combination of hand-drawn elements and photos of the eraser and pencil—artfully tell the story with wry, wordless panels and droll touches of humor, all nicely conveyed with only a few lines. This entertaining debut celebrates collaboration, creativity, and how even complete opposites can eventually be friends. ( )

I was very pleasantly surprised by this clever, playful and hilarious battle of the wits between a pencil and an eraser. Recommended for readers of all ages. ( )

An eraser and a pencil come into conflict in this debut picture-book from author/artist Max Amato, the former preferring the page to be pristine and white, the latter happiest when the page is full of scribbles. At first the eraser tries to keep up with the pencil, "fixing" the messes he has made, but eventually he discovers that is he works with the smudges, he can create beautiful art. It turns out that the pencil and the eraser are perfect together...

An engaging examination of the creative process, and how seemingly oppositional impulses - the "free spirit" embodied by the pencil, the desire for order represented by the eraser - can be harnessed together to produce worthwhile results, Perfect is a book I appreciated, more than I enjoyed. The theme of creativity, and using "mistakes" to make art has also been explored in such titles as What If... and The Book of Mistakes, both of which I prefer, from an aesthetic perspective. That said, I really did like the idea of using the eraser to "reveal" images, as it were, as this reminded me of illustrator Floyd Cooper's methodology, in which he does just that, using an eraser on painted panels, slowly creating images that way. Recommended to readers looking for new picture-books about creating art, and working with what you have (including pencil scribbles). ( )