Art & Max

Title- Art & Max
Author- David Weisner
Publisher- Clarion Books, copyright 2010
Illustration- Jacket Illustrations
Genre- Easy Children's Picture Book
Readability lexile-5-10 years old

Summary and target audience- This book is a majority of a picture book with a some text to help go with the pictures. It is about a lizard who wants to take a painting class being held. He takes what the instructor means literally and has one mistake after another. In the end after all the turmoil that is caused his mistakes turns into a beautiful masterpiece. The target audience would be young children either interested in paining or who have made mistakes and are on the verge of giving up. It shows that even after a series of mistakes something good can come of it.

Evaluation of Literature- Even though there are few words to this book the words that they do have are key. The author uses different text sizes to equate emotions. When the art teacher becomes frustrated with Max the author uses larger font to represent that. This book is clearly fiction and a lizard could never  do what Max did.

Literary Elements- The author uses the few words in this book to represent his literary elements but the words he does use are key to the story. I would also say there is some foreshadowing in this book. At least for me i could see the train-wretch  of the story progressing even before it happened. Personification played a big role in this story by giving the lizards human characteristics of speech, emotions, and painting abilities.

Illustrations- Once again the illustrations were what told this story. They were clear and concise purpose to each picture to represent emotion and progression of the story.

mini lesson- I would use this book as an opening to an art project to show that there are no wrong decisions in art and to let your imagination flow.