Just Like I Wanted

K-Gr 2—The story begins with a girl sitting at her table, wanting to make a beautiful picture. She starts by drawing a girl playing a piano, but when she accidentally scribbles outside the lines, she wonders what else the line could be. Her frustration mounts as more mistakes cause the picture to turn into a horse that gallops through a land of candy, then an airplane, followed by an eagle, and then a pirate ship. Eventually, the girl cuts out the pieces of the drawings that she likes, eventually completing a self-portrait of her swinging. The narration is written in rhyming verse, but it occasionally feels forced, and the rhythm is off. The story largely consists of the girl thinking about how she plans to transform both the intentionally drawn objects and the scribbles in her picture, and eventually the girl learns the benefits of persistence and creativity. The illustrations are a mixture of collage materials and hand-drawn images. This book is similar in theme to Barney Saltzberg's Beautiful Oops (Workman, 2010), and while the variation in writing style and illustration might be appreciated, readers may have to get past the minor issues with the poetry.