Coloring Book by Connie Wanek
Each picture is heartbreakingly banal, a kitten and a ball of yarn, a dog and bone. The paper is cheap, easily torn. A coloring book's authority is derived from its heavy black lines as unalterable as the ten commandments within which minor decisions are possible: the dog black and white, the kitten gray. Under the picture we find a few words, a title, perhaps a narrative, a psalm or sermon. But nowhere do we come upon a blank page where we might justify the careless way we scribbled when we were tired and sad and could bear no more.
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