The Ink Garden of Brother Theophane by C.M. Millen

Title: The Ink Garden of Brother Theophane 

Genre: Historic Fiction

Author: C.M. Millen

Illustrator: Andrea Wisnewski 

Major Awards:  No major awards 

Age group: Ages 6-9

 

Summary: 

This book is about a young monk in a monastery during the Middle Ages. Brother Theophane gets bored of just copying the Bible with plain brown ink. As a disciplinary act, he gets sent to the scribe’s room and is ordered to make the ink they use. At the end of the story, he discovers that he can create different colored inks using different plants. 

Evaluation: 

Appropriate grade levels for this book are first to third grade. I honestly really loved the illustrations in this book because they are so colorful and different than any other book I have read before. The cat showing up in almost every page made it really funny, so I think kids would really like that. I would honestly not use this book in my classroom but I think it will be really fun for an art class because it will inspire children to step out their comfort zone to create something new.