Reader's Diary #431- Hanoch Piven: My Dog Is As Smelly As Odd Socks

What a fantastic picture book! It begins with a child's fine, but somewhat generic, picture she'd drawn of her family. Her teacher remarks, "How great is that!" and the girl says, "But I didn't like it."

A book about self-esteem perhaps? Not at all. It's all about art and creativity. The girl knows she can do better and boy, does she ever!

Beginning with her dad, she remarks that her original scraggly-haired rendering doesn't reflect his personality at all. After all, she says, he's "as jumpy as a SPRING, and as playful as a SPINNING TOP..." and so forth. Then, when you turn the page, she's incorporated these objects into a new, more artistic and representative portrait of her dad. Then she goes down the list revising the other family members (including the onion-eyed stinky dog you see on the cover.)

We all enjoyed this book immensely. The pictures were funny, the similes were witty and often unpredictable, and we're all itching to now try our own.

(To see more of Piven's portraits, including ones he did for Rolling Stone magazine, Time, and Entertainment Weekly, visit his website. Some of my favourites include Homer Simpson, Bruce Springsteen, and Thom Yorke. What are yours?)