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PICTURE BOOKS
Varon, Sara

My Pencil and Me

48 pp. | Roaring Brook/First Second | September, 2020 | Trade ISBN 978-1-59643-589-6 $18.99
(2) K-3 In this imaginative and self-referential book, cartoonist Varon (Hold Hands, rev. 7/19) is working on a new picture-book project, but getting started is hard. Her dog Sweet Pea reminds her to seek encouragement from her talking pencil. Affirmations and prompts abound as the pencil supports Varon through self-doubt and decisions relating to setting, character, and plot. "It doesn't need to be perfect." Varon begins to illustrate (in lively, thick-lined art with speech-bubble dialogue and cartoonish forms) a baseball game between her imaginary friends and real friends. When the pencil reminds Varon that every story needs a conflict, Sweet Pea becomes upset: "This isn't a book with conflicts! This is a book where everybody gets along!" After a scuffle, the pencil snaps in half. The protagonist's imaginary friends save the day by taking over the storytelling and showing that creators have the power to "make anything happen." Varon, Sweet Pea, and the pencil finish the book, send it to an editor, and watch it appear in the real-life window of Brooklyn's Stories Bookshop + Storytelling Lab; a dramatic page-turn reveals these final steps through photography, with a superimposed doodle of the imaginary friends admiring the book on display. Endpapers contain images of various writing instruments, and the cover resembles a page ripped from a spiral-bound notebook.
Reviewer: Elisa Gall | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2020

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