My Best Friend Is As Sharp As a Pencil: And Other Funny Classroom Portraits

by Hanoch Piven

Here's the perfect back-to-school gift for budding artists. Like the creator's previous picture book, My Dog Is as Smelly as Dirty Socks, this picture book encourages children to be creative and make their own object portraits. It's a fun activity for home or for the classroom. You can even check out portraits made by other readers in the "kids' gallery" of author Hanoch Piven's Web site, www.pivenworld.com—and while you're at it, send in your own!

Learn how to create a funny librarian, a colorful art teacher, or your best friend by seeing how one girl does it in this simple, playful picture book that's comprised of portraits made of objects. Once the girl has talked about—and drawn—the key figures in her school, she ends with the pièce de résistance—a class portrait!

Genres: Picture Books, Art, Childrens, School, Writing, Humor, Back To School

40 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Miina Lindberg]

It’s a fun book! Especially when you are learning about similes. And object art.

[CanadianReader]

Collage: a piece of art made by sticking various different materials such as photographs and pieces of paper or fabric on to a backing.

Piven’s delightful picture book of “funny classroom” portraits is framed as a girl’s attempt to answer her visiting grandmother’s questions in something other than the usual boring way.

Instead of simply telling about her best and second best friends, her teachers, and some other classmates, she uses a variety of similes—some far more effective than others—and found objects (including buttons, crayons, bells, pencils, candies, computer parts, plastic letters, and so on) to create collage portraits of these people.

In my opinion, the best portrait is of the art teacher, whose head, a painter’s palette, is quite Picasso-esque. His hair and mouth are created with long colourful crayons, and he wears a little jean vest made of strips of denim. He is one cool dude.

Part of the fun of the book is seeing how Piven uses the objects he introduces as he lists 3 or 4 similes for each character before he goes on to present a portrait on the following page. How will he use the objects he’s shown us? For example, the girl narrator tells us her second best friend in the class is “slower than a snail” (a snail shell is shown), hard as a nut (walnuts are displayed), and green as lettuce leaves.Turn the page and you discover that the friend is class pet Mildred, the turtle. Her collage portrait is surprising: the snail shells are used for eyes, a collection of walnuts make her shell, and the lettuce leaves are used for Mildred’s feet. Other necessary details are drawn in.

I used this book several years back to introduce similes to kids in a language arts class. (As I said, however, many of the similes are rather poor: “happy as a balloon”? “happy as a gummy worm”? Not great models for students.)

In a useful afterword, Piven comments that “making collages with objects helps kids (and grown-ups) realize that they can create art even if they are insecure about their artistic abilities” and that “making pictures out of objects helps to tell stories that might be too long, difficult or boring told in just words.” Clearly, this book is a terrific springboard for doing just that.

[Karla]

It's so well written! LOVE IT!
Illustrations are adorable and creative- stems from recycled materials and encourages children to create such art at the end.
Written as a response to the child's grandmother - the format is unique.
HIGHLY recommend adding this to a classroom library!

[Jess]

For those needing books to teach metaphors.

[Michael]

I picked this up because it was there. It was silly.

[Heather]

Adorable!

[Chappyfamily]

I wouldn’t have cared for it except that it encourages everyone to be artistic. Don’t be afraid to create.

[Amy Gu]

My kid liked this book. It was interesting.

[Jill Williamson]

A great book for teaching similes and metaphors.

[Meghan]

A great way to introduce kids to idioms, similes and metaphors, at any age!

[Karen]

I love the use of multimedia art work to illustrate this book. This would be a wonderful book to incorporate with an art project.

[emyrose8]

Tons of similes, could be inspirational for a found art collage project

[Linda Atkinson]

love the portraits

[Mohamed Hossieny]

it will be not fun

[Brittany]

This book is a very cute and creative book. I actually had this book with me in my placement over the week and as the students were working on independent reading I noticed that our gifted student looked really bored, so I walked over to talk to her. I asked her what she was reading, and she mumbled that she had read all of her books about a million times and that she was very bored and uninterested. Immediately, I grabbed this book and asked her if she wanted to read it. She read it aloud to me with the up most expression and excitement. This book explores how a student describes all of her favorite people she interacts with while at school. The author used great descriptive words to really set the imagery of each person or thing described. Real life items such as microscopes, violins, and balloons are used to describe these colorful characters! I would use this book to teach children how to use imagery as a righting tool. By adding interesting descriptions to characters that can help aid with applying their imagination and with character development, as well as visual stimulation.

[Terry]

Jeff Barger of NC Teacher Stuff has a wonderful eye for books that will engage kids. His review of My Best Friend is As Sharp As a Pencil just reinforces his sharp eye. "What I really love about this book is this is an idea that students can replicate. I can see a class of students writing similes about the people in their lives and creating object art. Hanoch Piven's use of language is a terrific model for students to see how figurative language can create images in our minds and liven up our writing."

[Angie]

Metaphor alert! Metaphor alert! Teachers ... use this in a writing assignment at the beginning of the year. Might encourage kids to be more descriptive.


(Plus the art is just fun. I think My Dog is As Smelly As Dirty Socks: And Other Funny Family Portraits will still be my favorite by this author. But only by a little bit as this one is fun!)

[Nielson]

What a fabulous book to teach metaphors and similes! Using ordinary and every day objects, this little girl creates classroom portraits. For example her art teacher is someone who is as mysterious as dark glasses, as artistic as a paint palette and always so colorful like her crayons...then his portrait uses all of those objects. The artwork is creative and fun. It would be fun to use this book at the beginning of the year as a classroom introduction as the kids could create their own portrait describing themselves

[Elaine]

A fun & artistic story about a schoolgirl who decides to animate a day about school to her grandmother. Her classmates characters were artistically described followed by very good illustrations. I read this to class groups of 3rd & 5th graders for Dr. Seuss' Read Across America & the classes enjoyed the story very much and loved the different mediums of art. In another class, the students tried to describe each person described in the story. Great story. The books should be made available in a bigger size for class sizes to enjoy.

[Mary Katherine]

I absolutely loved this book! A boys grandmother comes to visit him at school and she always asks a lot of questions. So this time the boy decides instead of telling her he will show her. He uses all kinds of similes to describe the people in his class. For example, he says that his teacher's voice is as sweet as candy. So in the picture he makes of her, a piece of candy is used to represent her mouth. This is s cute way to introduce similes in the elementary classroom and is certainly a book I will have in the classroom.

[Rachel]

How would you describe your best friend, your teachers, yourself, how about characters from a book? This is a great introduction into metaphors and thinking outside the box to describe someone. It would be a great idea to use this concept at the beginning of the school year to get to know other staff members or allow the students to describe themselves to each other. Check back for some examples of Character Portraits from our Bledsoe Book Clubs.

[Marcie]

Great for the teacher who is looking for a book full of similes. This one has Hanoch Piven's object art portraits as in his other books, My Dog IS As Smelly As Dirty Socks and What Presidents are Made Of. I can see it being used during the first week of school to introduce members of the class and staff at school.

[Amianne Bailey]

3rd-4th Read-Aloud: I read this book before the STAAR test to remind students about the elements of good writing. We discussed how similes should be used like salt to add flavor to our writing; we don't want to use too many. The kids also loved the collage art in this book, which lead to a discussion of symbolism.

[Sarah]

More creative collages and similies from Piven - this time describing schoolmates and teachers. My library kids love the i-spy aspect of this book and they were all excited when they are got the chance to make their own simile portrait of their best friend using found objects.

[Laura Siegel]

When grandma asks about school, which she always does (me too), the answer comes in clever collages. P.S. the iPad is a great place to explore children's picture books. This one found on axis360 through my library and available with the blio app.

[Marianna Monaco]

4 stars for 9 year old author Hanoch Piven.
The classroom collage portraits are interesting.
However, I love the text the best.
I read this book on the goodreads recommendation of my friend Laura, who is as gentle as a bereze, as warm as laughter, and as wise as a grandma.

[Elizabeth Sandlund]

This poetry book does an amazing job of demonstrating different figurative language. My cooperating teacher had the students create their own object picture to match a poem they wrote about themselves. I would love to have this in my personal classroom library.

[Kylie]

Cute books that would be fantastic to use for teaching metaphor and simile to elementary grades. The illustrations are bright and fun, and the story reinforces kind thoughts about others, as well as loving others for their differences.

[Stacy Natal]

This would work as an introduction to teaching similes to elementary children. The illustrations are fun. The story also reinforces thinking kindly about others and the traits that make each an individual.

[Sara Jones]

This book would be great for teachers to introduce/review similes and also as a jumping-off point for writing or adding detail/description to writing.