Purple, Green and Yellow

Adиle Ashby, a library consultant, is the former editor of Canadian Materials for Schools and Libraries.

Brigid’s mother is understandably reluctant to buy her daughter
coloring markers. She has heard about other children drawing on the
wall, on the floor, even on themselves. When Brigid tells her of the new
markers that wash off, she finally agrees and provides 500 of them. When
Brigid becomes bored with them, she asks for and gets 500 of the new
ones that smell. Then her mother allows herself to be persuaded into
buying 500
“super-indelible-never-come-off-till-you’re-dead-and-maybe-even-late
r markers.” When Brigid becomes bored with coloring paper, she begins
to color herself—first her fingernails, then her hands, her face, her
belly button, and finally almost entirely all over. None of it comes
off, but she uses a marker that is the same color as she is to cover up.
When her hands are washed before dinner, this color comes off, and there
she is again, all the colors of the rainbow. The doctor gives her a pill
and tells her to take a bath. She comes out invisible. The she uses her
marker to color herself back into visibility, having already colored her
father, who will be fine as long as he does not get wet.

This story comes from an incident at the 1990 Storytelling Festival,
where Munsch noticed a girl named Brigid painting her fingernails with
colored markers. It has all the earmarks of his stories—exaggeration,
extravagance, and a very clever child. His newest illustrator,
Quebec’s Hélиne Desputeaux, has perfectly caught the tone of the
story in her bright, colorful, comic pictures.