i'm not helping!

Lately in my quest for interesting children's books, I've been finding out you truly can't judge a book by its title and cover. I've had some recent letdowns. So I've taken to picking up books whose illustrations strike me as, well, cool. Scribble by Deborah Freedman is one such book that caught my eye. The story starts off with two little girls coloring on pink and yellow paper. One girl draws a sleeping princess waiting for her prince and another draws a cat. Well, the girl who drew the princess doesn't really appreciate the artistic vision of the girl who drew the cat and a fight breaks out. Cat Girl scribbles on Princess Girl's picture. Up until the point, the story had been in comic book format with panels and word bubbles, but when the cat becomes curious, the format switches to storytelling with text at the top of the page and the illustrations become pink and yellow cutouts and sharpie lines. Cat girl and her real cat still make appearances though and the effect of her more traditional, colored pencil-type illustration against the bold cutouts. Eventually the word bubbles get worked back in too for dialogue and in the end, the book returns to its original format. I think doing the book this way truly draws the reader into the fantasy of drawings coming to life and interacting with one another. The story itself wasn't that impressive but I think the illustrations made up for it (there's a little humor in there too). It was just a fun read.