Perfect

An eraser and a pencil come into conflict in this debut picture-book from author/artist Max Amato, the former preferring the page to be pristine and white, the latter happiest when the page is full of scribbles. At first the eraser tries to keep up with the pencil, "fixing" the messes he has made,

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but eventually he discovers that is he works with the smudges, he can create beautiful art. It turns out that the pencil and the eraser are perfect together...

An engaging examination of the creative process, and how seemingly oppositional impulses - the "free spirit" embodied by the pencil, the desire for order represented by the eraser - can be harnessed together to produce worthwhile results, Perfect is a book I appreciated, more than I enjoyed. The theme of creativity, and using "mistakes" to make art has also been explored in such titles as What If... and The Book of Mistakes, both of which I prefer, from an aesthetic perspective. That said, I really did like the idea of using the eraser to "reveal" images, as it were, as this reminded me of illustrator Floyd Cooper's methodology, in which he does just that, using an eraser on painted panels, slowly creating images that way. Recommended to readers looking for new picture-books about creating art, and working with what you have (including pencil scribbles).

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