Pencil: A Story With a Point

Volume XXV / Issue 10 - November 9 / 2018
Pencil
Pencil
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Pencil: A Story With a Point

Author: 
Ann Ingalls
Illustrated by: 
Dean Griffiths
Toronto, ON: Pajama Press, February, 2019
32 pp., hardcover, $19.95
ISBN: 
978-1-77278-047-5
Grades: 
Kindergarten-grade 3
Ages: 
5-8
Review by: 
Ellen Heaney (Reviewed from Advance Reading Copy)
3
Excerpt: 

It is hard to say whether Pencil: A Story With a Point is a book about a battle between old and new technologies or an excuse for a series of outrageous puns about stationery supplies.

Young Jackson and his buddy Pencil have been together a long time, scribbling and sketching, “playing mustache, airplane and parade”. But when Tablet brings his newer, fancier capabilities into the picture, the endearing yellow stump of wood and graphite with googly eyes is tossed aside in favour of Tablet’s video games and e-mail.

Existence in the junk drawer is an ignominious one.
Everything in that drawer was blunt or broken.
Pencil couldn’t see any point in going on.
“Move over!” snipped Scissors.
“You don’t measure up,” said Ruler.
Pencil nearly lost his grip.

Relief comes when sister (?) Jasmine, in search of a rubber band, plucks Pencil out of the drawer and adopts him as a fashion accessory. They spend a little time hanging out in proximity to Tablet, but Tablet wants nothing to do with Pencil, who is “not my type”.

Tablet’s downfall (my pun, not the author’s) comes when the frisky dog knocks Tablet off the table and he is broken. Pencil tries a lot of things to work his way back into Jackson’s graces. He decorates himself with a variety of pencil toppers, which do little to impress. And:

Pencil showed Jackson all the cool other things he could do.
He could be a book mark. He could be a backscratcher.
He could be a pole for a very small tent.

It still takes the help of the other items in the junk drawer to woo Jackson back, working in concert to put together the makings of a flip book for Jackson to illustrate with Pencil. After that, Pencil and Scissors and Marker, and presumably Jackson and Jasmine too, all live happily ever after. For, as Glue says, “We stick together!”

Veteran author Ann Ingalls has produced a book with a lightweight plot but much lighthearted play with language that will delight younger readers just learning about verbal humour as well as teachers who could use this book as a lesson on the pun as literary device.

Dean Griffiths is a British Columbia illustrator with a number of awards to his name. He has filled the pages of Pencil with familiar objects which are candy-colourful and plastic in their contours, as well as expressive images of the two dark-eyed, dark-haired children. Tooth-marked and a little off-kilter, Pencil is definitely a character in his own right in the story. The spread showing the shadowy interior of the junk drawer where a small green flashlight illuminates little but a number of pairs of eyes is especially captivating.

Recommended
Reviewer: 

Ellen Heaney is a retired children’s librarian living in Coquitlam, British Columbia.

Subject Headings: 
Computers-Juvenile fiction
Friendship-Juvenile fiction
Puns and punning-Juvenile fiction