Art & Max

Title: Art & Max
Author: David Wiesner
Publisher: Clarion Book, October 4, 2010
Reading Level: Any age
Pages: 37
Genre: Wordless Picture Book







Summary:

Arthur is an artist. While he is drawing a picture of another lizard Max comes barreling in. Max tells Arthur that he can paint too, but Arthur doesn't believe him. However, when Max walks away dejected Arthur lets him paint as long as Max doesn't bug him. Stuck, though, Max askes Arthur what he should paint. On Arthur's suggesting that he could paint him, Max starts to throw pain upon Arthur. Arthur is so mad that he yells at Max and then all the pain shatters off of him. Uh oh! When the paint shatters, Arthur is sill colored! So Max brings a huge fan and starts to blow all the color off of Arthur, but it doesn't work. He gets a drink of water, and then he really does lose the color. Arthur was colorless! He was so mad that he started to run away, but MAx grabs onto him and then he starts to unravel! Pretty soon Arthur is a jumble of string. Wanting to help, Max starts to reform Arthur, but it takes him a few tries to get it right. Max runs and grabs a vacuum and cleans up all the color and tells Arthur to wait. BAM! He shoots all the colors onto Arthur and now he's spotted AND colorful! When they start to pain again they throw it all over and have fun! Most of this story is portrayed through pictures. There are hardly any words, and through the pictures you can see how crazy it is and how upset Arthur gets. It's also fun to watch the other lizards that Arthur was paintint at the beginning. The two are usually fine with what's happening. However, the red one gets quite upset and frustrated at what's going on.

My Reaction:

When I first read this story I thought it was different, and I wasn't sure if I liked it all that much. However, when I read it again I loved it. I think this was because I paid more attention to the pictures and the emotions that were being portrayed.

Potential Problems:

I didn't recognize any potential problems with this story.

Recommendations:

I would recommend this to anyone who wants to have fun with a book. For me it brought back the memories of finger-painting and no drawing within the lines. I think kids would have fun looking at all of the colors on the pages, and with how they put Arthur together again.