Chalk

Chalk

By Bill Thomson

This book is on the ALA notable books list.

This is a wordless book. It begins with a playground riding dinosaur in the rain with a star studded gift bag hanging from its mouth. Three children are walking together toward the playground in raingear, carrying an umbrella.

They find the gift bag and look inside it to discover it is full of all different colors of sidewalk chalk. One child takes out the yellow piece and thinks about what to draw with it.

When she draws the sun on the pavement, suddenly the sun bursts into the sky and glares up from the puddles on the ground. The rain stops and the ground begins to dry. So, the second child drops her umbrella, takes the orange piece of chalk, and draws butterflies all over the pavement. The children watch with glee as they are surrounded by fluttering monarchs.

The third child then takes the green and blue pieces of chalk and decides to see what will happen if he draws a dinosaur. Sure enough, a T-Rex towers over them as they run to the slides to hide.

Cowering inside the tunnel slide, the boy quickly draws a pouring raincloud on the wall of the tunnel. The sky clouds over, huge raindrops splash down and the children watch as the T-Rex dissolves in the downpour, becoming a green puddle on the pavement.

Carefully replacing the bag full of chalk in the mouth of the dinosaur riding toy, the three children slowly walk away.

The illustrations in this book are the story and are very well painted. They look almost like photographs, except that they represent something that cannot actually be real. The book is a beautiful work of art.

Thomson, B. (2010). Chalk. Tarrytown, New York: Marshall Cavendish Children.