The Pencil

For his mom’s birthday, Tom Thomas has painted her portrait in pencil. Nolik and Fire discover the portrait as Tom Thomas is sleeping and decide they can improve it. They add details found in a variety of masterpieces to the portrait of Tom Thomas’s mother: giving her long hair, a hat, a bowl of fruit, a pet dog, and finally a mustache and beard. When Tom Thomas wakes up he can’t believe his eyes. There’s no way he can give this to his mom as a portrait of her! Now he doesn’t have a gift at all. In his desperation to fix the picture he ends up actually coloring the entire page black with the pencil. Suddenly Fire and Nolik have an idea of how they can transform the picture. They can use an eraser to create white lines within the black field. They decide to paint a still life on the page rather than a portrait. It works! Mom thanks her son for the lovely picture. She admires its original technique and is ready to hang it up in the kitchen where they will now go for her birthday breakfast.