Wash On!

Wash On! by Michèle Marineau is a story about a mother who gives her daughter, Petronilla, a bath. And then Petronilla says, “Wash on.” Everything starts changing colors because the mother keeps scrubbing her with a wash cloth. A few days later, the whole family has been colored, including the sister, the dog, and the Dad. And then, as days passed, the whole town began changing colors too, with blotches of color. They went to the doctor to get the colors away. The doctor said there was no cure for it, and he had never heard of the disease before. He said it was coloritis. The whole world was swarming with lots of colors. The family started looking for the dog. The dog was lost in the colors of the house. Petronilla said, “Wash off,” and touched the dog, and he started looking normal. Petronilla touched everything in the house to wash off all the colors. I thought the story was very creative, funny, and imaginative, especially all the colors and how the illustrator painted it on. It would be weird if the artist colored all the colors. Instead, the illustrator put blotches on it.