This is an amusing, clever story of a pencil, paint brush, and eraser that come to life and create (or wipe out) a world where inanimate objects, as well as living things, ask the pencil to give them a name (check out the ant on the bottom right of the next-to-last two-page color spread!). ( )

My daughter is home from her first year of college. Time for Mama, Papa and Baby Bear to sit on the sofa for a picture book binge! (4 of 4)

I picked this up because a Goodreads reviewer said it was a superior version of the story I liked so much in Max Amato's Perfect. I'll have to disagree on that though, as this story is much too dark and disturbing. A pencil creates a dog, a cat, a boy and more and more and more. The new creations become increasingly demanding and soon turn on him. His solution unleashes an apocalypse the sort of which I have never seen in a children's picture book, and the resolution seems straight out of a Rick & Morty episode: twisted and sort of sexualized. Bizarre. ( )

Fiction. I would use this book to demonstrate problem solving and to also explain the importance of and the technique of revising a story or paper that the student has written.

A little pencil was tired of laying around doing nothing, so he started moving and squiggling and began to draw. He drew different objects and living things, then drew a paintbrush to make is drawings in color.
1 book

Though this book is quite long, I enjoyed it a lot. The plot was witty and easy to follow. A child would find this book rather humorous, I mean I found this book humorous. The conflict does not really appear until near the end of the book, but there is certainly suspense about how the "hero" will solve the problem that has been placed before him. The illustrations make the story, as it is a story almost entirely based off of illustrations. The fact the book starts with no illustrations and transitions to having pictures and then those pictures being colored in makes the whole thing that much more "believable". The writing of the book is easy to read, and it has a very nice flow to it. ( )