THE CRAYON STUB

An artist with few resources but a lot of moxie attempts to create a masterpiece.

This humorous book follows a large black cat and a small gray one who have a siblinglike rapport and are both shaped like fat kidney beans with rather stubby tails and simple but expressive facial features. Vowing to “draw something TOTALLY SPECTACULAR and become WORLD FAMOUS,” the bigger cat grabs a fresh sheet of paper and a box of crayons. But our hero is horrified to find the stub of a red crayon in the box—and nothing else. Astute viewers may notice bits of color on the white fluff surrounding the smaller cat’s mouth. More and more clues mount as to the missing crayons’ whereabouts. Meanwhile, the bigger cat emotes dramatically about the crisis. Colorful speech bubbles show Big Cat’s grandstanding, egocentric sentences and Little Cat’s unvarying response of “mew.” Geometric art rendered in a crayonlike texture portrays giggle-worthy scenes as the cats ruminate together and then end up in a chase sequence after the little one swallows the crayon stub and the paper. The denouement—not for the squeamish, but very funny—is a testament to creativity and a sly wink about “art.”

Funny feline feats.