IF YOU TAKE A PENCIL

by Fulvio Testa ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1982

A drawing book that turns into a counting book that grows into a storybook . . . that snaps back to where it began. But this isn't sterile cleverness. ""If you take a pencil, you can draw two cats"" (here are two kids drawing two cats); ""And if they like each other, there will soon be three."" No succeeding development is foreseeable (it's like an add-on story in that respect); each is just slightly surreal (in a precisionist, long-vista Chirico fashion) and slightly mischievous. ""A garden with six orange trees""--and the kids, lolling by a picnicking little girl--takes us to ""a fountain with seven jets""--which the kids, wearing flippers and mask, are about to dive into. And then, miraculously, we pass from the fountain's ""eight red fish with blue tails"" to the blue sea ""where there is a boat with nine sails"" . . . and wind up on a treasure island, with twelve chests, all empty except one--in which there is a pencil! An expansive, eye-catching adventure that doesn't exhaust itself on the first go-through.

Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1982

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Dial

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1982

Categories: CHILDREN'S