Doodle Cook

PreS-Gr 3--Tullet, hash-slinger extraordinaire, invites young artists to delight in a riotous exploration of shapes and patterns as they "think outside the box" (or circle, as the case may be) to decorate their dinner plates with chromatic splashes of squiggles and scribbles. The "recipes" result in delicious designs, subtly seasoned with a well-taught lesson in Abstract Expressionism that even preschoolers can easily digest. Adding to the welcome supply of interactive art books recently hitting the market, such as Romero Britto's Color Play! (Little Simon, 2011) and Barney Saltzberg's Beautiful Oops (Workman, 2010), Doodle Cook encourages youngsters to take up their purple crayons (or green, yellow, or blue, for that matter) and create their own world of cuisine, which includes spaghetti, dot stew, and triangle pie. Mom and the local librarian, however, might shudder at the thought of having to "re-train" young artists (temporarily liberated from customary book etiquette) to practice appropriate behavior when reading other books not meant to be decorated with broad sweeping strokes of permanent marker. Will a participant in this interactive reading experience ever look at books in the same way again? Probably. After all, countless households have survived Crockett Johnson's classic Harold and the Purple Crayon. Creative, clever, and fun pedagogy.--Kathryn Diman, Bass Harbor Memorial Library, Bernard, ME

Readers who enjoy a structured approach to making art should feel at home with Tullet's (Press Here) oversize collection of art "recipes." With directions on the left-hand pages and empty plates on the right, the idea is to load up the plates with delicacies like "Scribble Delight," "Zigzag Soup," and "Thousand-Layer Cake." The recipe for "Beautifully Shaped Kebabs," for instance, instructs children to stack various shapes on four "nice and straight" lines, and then "garnish the kebabs with colors or patterns." Mostly printed in b&w with a few neon-colored spreads, it's an engaging activity book that smartly parallels the creativity involved in making both food and art. Ages 4-8. (Oct.)