Bound To Stay Bound

Booklist - 07/01/2012 *Starred Review* Marisol, the young girl who saved and savored her older brother’s drawing in Ish (2004), now has a gallery of her own artwork on the refrigerator at home and a reputation for creativity at school. She feels confident in volunteering to paint the sky for the school library mural. But wait—how? There’s no blue paint in the box of supplies. Marisol ponders the question as she rides the school bus home and watches day change to evening. In her dreams that night, the answer becomes clear. Back at school, she paints her own, original “sky color,” using swirling, watery tints of orange, yellow, green, purple, and gray to capture the actual hues shown in the skies above her. Reynolds’ lively ink drawings, washed with watercolor, gouache, and tea, depict nearly everything in black and sepia tones except artworks, paints, and skies, which appear in blazing colors. Besides encouraging children to paint what they actually see, rather than repeating the visual conventions they’ve learned, this original offering frames an apparent problem as a challenge with a simple solution. Rounding out the series that began with The Dot (2003), this fresh, whimsical picture book encourages the artist and creative thinker in every child. - Copyright 2012 Booklist.

School Library Journal - 10/01/2012 PreS-Gr 2—Marisol is an enthusiastic artist who doesn't hesitate to share her creations "with the world"-on the refrigerator, through the mail, even on posters. So when the class prepares to paint a mural for the library, she is right there shouting, "I'll paint the sky!" But she is flummoxed when she can't find blue paint. "How am I going to make the sky without blue paint?" The problem gnaws at her until she watches a sunset. That night she dreams she is flying "through a sky swirling with colors," and next day, she mixes paints into "an all-together new [sky] color." Reynolds's familiar fluid drawings, executed in watercolor, ink, and tea, reveal a young girl filled with personality, squiggly hair flying, clothes adorned with contrasting patterns. The burst of color on the front endpaper is the only hint of the delight in store since the artwork to follow is almost devoid of color except for Marisol's creations. Only when readers get to the final spread that reveals the mural with Marisol's dazzling sky as backdrop for the multicolored fish leaping from the water below are they treated to a surprising display of the girl's creativity. This story, along with Reynolds's The Dot (2003) and Ish (2004, both Candlewick), carries the important message that there is an artist inside everyone and that sometimes finding that creative spark means doing the unexpected. In these days of filling in circles on tests, it's an important message to share with youngsters.—Marianne Saccardi, formerly at Norwalk Community College, CT - Copyright 2012 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.