The Eraserheads
Grade 2–4—What a boy imagines while drawing is chronicled through a dialogue with an owl, a pig, and a crocodile, eraser creatures that live atop his colored pencils. The owl is good with words and backward letters. The pig erases everything except animals drawn larger than him. The crocodile is in charge of numbers. When the boy runs out of room after drawing a landscape, the crocodile goes too far, erasing and erasing until the trio lands in the middle of nowhere. Suddenly a wave sweeps the fearful friends onto a desert island, and they are chased by wild animals. The boy crumples and abandons his work, leaving the eraserheads stuck unless they can figure a way to inspire him to persevere and transform the scene into something else. Kulikov, a master of mixed-media illustrations, effectively uses two contrasting tones to create distinct, but juxtaposed worlds: the boy and his eraserheads are layered and densely rendered, while the child's artwork and the background images are lightly sketched and hatched with a watercolor base. This complex tale will intrigue those adventurers ready for aJumanji-like experience of jumping into the arduous but rewarding creative process of persevering through mistakes.—Sara Lissa Paulson, American Sign Language and English Lower School PS 347, New York City(c) Copyright 2010.  Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc.  No redistribution permitted.