The Line
Ever since Harold took his purple crayon out for a ride, tots in picture books have been using the elements of the very pages they inhabit for postmodern explorations of imagination.  The little girl here starts her flight of fancy when she comes across a pencil line and instantly whips it into a slide.  The fun progresses through an inventive array of possibilities until the line seems to take on a mind of its own, growing into the outline of a monstrous creature with an appetite for tykes.  The creature is driven away in the nick of time, however, by a friendlier beast, and we start to suspect that the girl is being told a story rather than just creating one, an idea born out by a surprise on the last page.  Bossio’s scratchy, unkempt style gives the figures a sense of frenetic excitement and animation, and the backgrounds include vague shadows of scribbles and smears, all of which lends the sense of something handmade, a work of unfettered imagination. Preschool-Kindergarten. --Jesse Karp