SOLVED. Children’s Picture Book. Knight & princess (?) but main character is the painter who is outside the story & he can’t keep up with the narrator, so he has to improvise with the things he has (like a snail for a horse etc). Read ~ 2007-2009. [s]

[Maddi]

I read this book when I was a kid, probably around 2007-2009 ish. It was a short, maybe 20 page, picture book, and the story was supposed to be a generic “knight saves the princess in the tower” type of story, but it almost broke the fourth wall because the main character was actually this little Painter who was in charge of illustrating the story. He would converse with the Narrator because he kept running out of time to make the pictures as the story was being told. The Narrator would talk about the knight riding his horse, but then the Painter could only find a snail for the knight to ride, or the Narrator would describe a bridge and the Painter would have to build it out of grape flavored popsicle sticks because that’s all he had. I’m pretty certain there was an army and/or a dragon at one point, but I can’t remember what the Painter had to replace them with. I’ve been trying to find this book for years, but the “story” is generic enough that Google has never been much help.

[Ayshe]

An Undone Fairy Tale maybe?

[Maddi]

Ayshe wrote: "An Undone Fairy Tale maybe?"

That's the one!! You're a lifesaver, thank you!