He Who Brought The Sunset To The Earth

The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush

Retold and Illustrated by Tomie dePaola

Published by G.P Putnam’s Son New York

1998

36 Pages

                                                Traditional Literature

Through many of Tomie dePaola’s books, you will be able to find a life lesson, much like the one you find in The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush. When choosing this book, I knew that there would be a purpose to reading the story but was not quite sure what that was at the time. This story is about a young boy called Little Gopher who does not fit in with the other boys his age. He had a gift that none of the other boys had and it would become very important one day. He often felt sad that he was unlike the others until one day he was shown how special his gift really was. The boy had a vision that would help him become special among his people.

Tomie dePaola uses different types of mediums to create his illustrations in his book. He starts with a dark line to outline the pictures and then fills in the lines with color using liquid transparent acrylic paint. He does this so that he can build the “skins” of color. He has two other steps he goes through when illustrating his books. You can tell in his illustrations how much time he takes on each one of them to make them perfect. The colors dePaola uses on the pages help you as the reader tell how the character in the story is feeling. His paintings also depict the time period and the culture so well that they could enlighten someone who does not know much about either.

This particular story is geared more towards pre k through second grade students.

There are multiple lessons you could incorporate with the reading of this story. With younger students you could have them do an art activity and paint rocks like the little boy in the story did. You could also use the story as a history lesson and look up petroglyphs to teach them how cultures communicate. They could make their own painting of different petroglyphs to make a story of their own. The Legend of the Indian Paint Brush could be used for a lesson on ones character. This story teaches you that you don’t always have to be like everyone else around you. Sometimes being different can be a great thing and it being yourself makes you into the person you will become.