With this inspiring picture book about opening up the imagination, Peter H. Reynolds completes the "creatrilogy" begun with The Dot.
In The Dot, Vashti tells her teacher, "I just can't draw!" and her teacher suggests, "Just make a mark and see where it takes you." Fans of Ish may recall Marisol as the little sister who creates a "crumpled gallery" of her brother Ramon's discarded drawings. Now Marisol takes center stage. She exhibits her own drawings and paintings, and she believes "everybody was an artist." Marisol gives a set of paints wrapped in a red ribbon to a boy in plaid pants and glasses. She widens her concept of what the sky looks like when there's no blue paint for the mural in the library. Reynolds washes the spread in sunset shades of orange and pineapple when Marisol looks out the school bus window as "the sun lowered closer to the horizon." As day turns to night, she sees a swath of burgundy and grape. Marisol dreams the solution to the missing blue: a sky with colors "too many to count."
A subtheme follows the bespectacled boy and his new box of paints. It sits on his desk in class; he carries it to the library to paint the mural. He's begun to think of himself as an artist. As Marisol at last paints the sky, the bespectacled boy asks, "What color is that?" (an echo of Leon derailing Ramon with "What is that?" in Ish). Unflappable Marisol replies, "That?... That is sky color." Brava! --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness