![]() ![]() ![]() Alternatively, readers won’t fail to note that this small book, illustrated with gentle soy-ink drawings and featuring an adult-child bear duo engaged in various sedentary and lively pursuits, could just as easily be about human parent- (or grandparent-) child pairs: some of the softly colored illustrations depict scenarios that are more likely to occur within a home and/or other family-oriented setting. ![]() However, the voice could equally be that of an adult, because who can’t look back upon teachers or other early mentors who gave of themselves and offered their pupils so much? Indeed, some of the self-aware, self-assured expressions herein seem perhaps more realistic as uttered from one who’s already grown. This gentle ode to a teacher’s skill at inspiring, encouraging, and being a role model is spoken, presumably, from a child’s viewpoint. Even more importantly, it dismisses young readers’ deliberate artwork too.Ĭatastrophically undermines its own message.Ī paean to teachers and their surrogates everywhere. Moreover, the text’s consistent and incorrect use of the term “doodle” is not only inaccurate-doodles are casual or absentminded, whereas Raven tries hard, even at the beginning-it belittles Raven’s deliberate artwork. Mess-ups” and works on them again until they’re “perfected” into her “very own gallery of masterpieces,” the delicious spookiness vanishes into a boring moral. Not a wardrobe nor the attic nor even the recycling center can hold them they return onto her mirror, into her bed, and even-eek!-as part of “a brand-new box of drawing pads made from 100 percent recycled paper.” Three visual tones-Raven’s art, styled like a child’s black-and-white pencil drawings Raven’s huge, round, uber-glossy cartoon eyes and ominously dark backgrounds that turn dystopically yellow at the recycling center-complement but also jar against one another, parallel to the way the drawings’ reappearances unsettle Raven. But just like the cat in the old folk song, the papers come back. It’s harder than she thinks, and although she works diligently, she finds the results “ugly.” She gathers up the so-called “doodles” and stuffs them under the bed. Raven, a peach-skinned girl with curly red hair, sees masterpieces in an art museum and sets out to create some herself. ![]()
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