I just read Hye-Eun Kim’s 2021 picture book Pencil.
Beautiful. Simply beautiful. If you like picture books, or know a kid who likes picture books, art, or drawing, you have to pick this book up.
It is a wordless book, or, as the page of text at the back of the book says, a “silent book.” Using just well-designed and lovely images, this book tells the story of a pencil’s life cycle.
Pencil shavings become leaves, leaves join a tree, tree becomes trees, a forest grows, and the pages are full of leafy beauty. Then the tree is harvested and processed into wood, eventually becoming a pencil again. And then…
Again, lovely. There are many different trees here, for young readers to notice, and they all appear pencil-drawn. This is Kim’s first book. Please, more!
