It's a beautifully simple children's book about a circular shaped creature whose body is missing a wedge shaped piece. It goes on a journey to find the piece that will fit perfectly in with it. While on its journey, it meets worms, smells flowers, and lets butterflies land on it. It meets pieces that are too big, too small, too sharp, too square. It even meets pieces that fit, but then holds them too tightly or not tightly enough. When it finally gets it right, the creature realizes that it can no longer do the things that it used to love to do, and continues on, leaving the piece behind.
The book is filled with simple and lovely illustrations and I did my best to mimic the style.
This manicure only has two "ingredients": Lime Crime Milky Ways and my It's So Easy Nails Stripe Rite in black.
As you can see, I've shown the creature, its worm friend, the flower it stops to smell, and the missing piece.
On my thumb I showed the butterfly that landed on the creature. When the piece was a part of it, it rolled too fast for the butterfly to land on it anymore. That was one of the things that it loved that it couldn't do with the piece.
Here's a great quote from Anne Roiphe in The New York Times Book Review about the story:
"This fable can also be interpreted to mean that no one should try to find all the answers, no one should hope to fill all the holes in themselves, achieve total transcendental harmony or psychic order because a person without a search, loose ends, internal conflicts and external goals becomes too smooth to enjoy or know what's going on. Too much satisfaction blocks exchange with the outside."Food for thought! :)
My grandma Mo used to read this (and lots of other Shel Silverstein books) to me and my sister when we were growing up, and these books are really special to us.
Mo used to live in Key West, Florida, where Shel Silverstein lived sometimes. They were friends and she had him sign copies of his books for us. He drew pictures in addition to signing them, which is just inexpressibly awesome to me! Here are a couple of mine:
This one below is the one that is in my copy of The Missing Piece.
Last year I did nails inspired by Chuck Palahniuk's Invisible Monsters.
Check out upcoming challenge prompts here.