Wednesday, December 14, 2011

19. Dish Up a Doodle

Doodle Cook
Created by Herve Tullet
Phaidon, 2011
$14.95, ages 5 and up, 48 pages

Would you care for a dish of Dot Stew? Or perhaps a few Crayon Puff Pastries?

The creator of this year's best-selling Press Here offers 18 imaginary dishes for children to cook up with markers and crayons.

Readers are given an empty plate, then a recipe with prompts, such as draw loops or sprinkle on tiny strokes, to fill it in.

In one recipe, readers draw 500 lines in succession. In another, a plateful of blobs. In others still, they blow on their creation or have someone jiggle it as they draw.

For a recipe called, "Nameless Soup," Tullet asks readers to draw a vegetable soup that names itself.

Readers scatter letters from their name and the name of someone they really like within the outline of a plate.

Then they add letters to those letters to make syllables. Afterward, they randomly circle some of the syllables to form the name of the soup.

Readers get swept in by Tullet's sense of adventure, much as they did with Press Here.

A Hand Salad? Why hands? we could ask. But then again, does it really matter?

After Press Here, we'd follow Tullet just about anywhere in a book.

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