Pistes d'exploration

Talk about the development of the story. Map it out using a graphic organizer.

Create a comic strip showing what your pencil might draw and what might happen.

Tell a story in the round, with each person adding on to the previous person’s ideas.

Talk about the story line. Map it out on chart paper.

Sort words into categories, using a graphic organizer: people, animals, school tools, home objects, city objects. 

Create a comic strip showing what your pencil might draw and what might happen.

The Old Woman Who Named Things, The Line, The Dot, Journey

Mots-clés

Picture book , art , cause and effect , creativity , drawing , problem-solving , recurrent language

Commentaire descriptif

This witty, imaginative book is about a lonely pencil that decides to draw a world for himself, populated with inhabitants that include a boy (Banjo), a dog (to keep him company), a cat (for the dog), a paintbrush (for colour, as requested) and more. But when the pencil creates an eraser that starts to take control, chaos ensues—until some quick thinking (and drawing) brings the story back full circle. As the pencil’s narrative shifts, so do the illustrations, which alternate between sparse black-and-white spreads and busy colourful ones rendered in acrylic. Readers will adore the characters’ comical expressions and naughty antics as well as the running gags punctuating the story, as inhabitants of the narrative are continuously erased and recreated. Rich with description and clever dialogue, the book is valuable as a trigger for discussion on the origins of things or to fuel artistic expression and creativity.