Finding Lucy

PreS-Gr 2–Lucy, dressed in a paint-smudged apron, loves to paint in the garden with her cat. One day a reporter, a hare, asks Lucy what she is doing. She explains she is painting the color of laughter. The reporter says the painting looks like jellybean soup. After reading the reporter’s account, other would-be critics in various animal forms visit Lucy to express their personal opinions about her painting. Lucy listens and tries to accommodate the visitors by changing her artwork. Frustrated, she decides that she doesn’t need to please the critics. Her art is her own. Beautiful, bright, and fanciful illustrations using acrylics on canvas gift readers with delightful details. A sailing elephant, a singing frog, and a chicken jumping over the moon are examples of artistic leaps of imagination in the story. The prose is mainly conversational, lengthy at times, and includes entertaining adjectives such as atrocious and flabbergasting. Moreover, the careful choice of words invites children to think about the correlation between art, color, and feelings.