The Ugly Doodles

by Valeria Wicker

Overview

This hilarious and adorable picture book about creativity, fear of failure, and embracing your imperfections is perfect for kids and budding artists of all ages.


After an inspiring visit to the local art museum, Raven Rembrandt is eager to create her own beautiful masterpieces. But the only thing she can seem to draw are ugly doodles — and they won't go away, no matter how hard she tries to discard them! After a few increasingly inventive attempts to get rid of them, Raven realizes that the only way to learn to love her art is to just create.


Valeria Wicker's endearing and quirky art style adds humor to her sweet and whimsical story about overcoming a fear of imperfection and failure.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316456265
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	07/07/2020
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	1,091,371
Product dimensions:	10.10(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	3 - 6 Years

About the Author

Valeria Wicker is an Italian Art School Graduate passionate about all types of Art. When she's not drawing, she can be found in her shop working on projects such as carving wood sculptures, restoring antique trunks, and refinishing furniture. Valeria resides in eastern Pennsylvania with her husband Mike, their five beautiful children, a bunny, and an adorable teddy-bear-like Labrador named Mia.

Editorial Reviews

"A hilarious ode to first attempts and revision results for every artist, writer, and maker."—Ame Dyckman, New York Times bestselling author

From the Publisher

06/01/2020

K-Gr 2—It only takes one visit to the art museum for Raven to fall in love. She immediately decides to turn her bedroom into a gallery and fill it with her very own masterpieces. Unfortunately, when she sits down to draw, all she can make are ugly doodles. She hates them, so she stuffs them under the bed. And that's when the ugly doodles start haunting her. No matter what she does with them, the papers come back to her. Finally, Raven gives in. She takes out her crayons and paints, adding polish and color until her bedroom gallery is full of masterpieces that started their lives as ugly doodles. Suspense build swiftly with descriptive third-person narration and well-timed page turns. Unfortunately, the story's conclusion suddenly veers away from the fun of the midsection and leaves readers with a moral that is tidy, yet lackluster. The illustrations use a mauve and mahogany palette and fuzzy black framing to create an eerie Victorian atmosphere. Raven, with her red curls and porcelain skin, has expressive eyes and body language. VERDICT Not quite a scary story, but not fully a book to inspire creativity. This is a secondary purchase for libraries.—Amy Seto Forrester, Denver P.L.

School Library Journal

2020-03-25
Artwork has paranormal staying power.

Raven, a peach-skinned girl with curly red hair, sees masterpieces in an art museum and sets out to create some herself. It’s harder than she thinks, and although she works diligently, she finds the results “ugly.” She gathers up the so-called “doodles” and stuffs them under the bed. But just like the cat in the old folk song, the papers come back. Not a wardrobe nor the attic nor even the recycling center can hold them; they return onto her mirror, into her bed, and even—eek!—as part of “a brand-new box of drawing pads made from 100 percent recycled paper.” Three visual tones—Raven’s art, styled like a child’s black-and-white pencil drawings; Raven’s huge, round, uber-glossy cartoon eyes; and ominously dark backgrounds that turn dystopically yellow at the recycling center—complement but also jar against one another, parallel to the way the drawings’ reappearances unsettle Raven. When Raven finally takes her “hideous. Miserable-looking. Mess-ups” and works on them again until they’re “perfected” into her “very own gallery of masterpieces,” the delicious spookiness vanishes into a boring moral. Moreover, the text’s consistent and incorrect use of the term “doodle” is not only inaccurate—doodles are casual or absentminded, whereas Raven tries hard, even at the beginning—it belittles Raven’s deliberate artwork. Even more importantly, it dismisses young readers’ deliberate artwork too.

Catastrophically undermines its own message. (Picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Reviews