written by mark
illustrated by kara (old-fashioned woodcuts)
[book opens and starts speaking]
[cue british accent]
On the first day of February, in my fifth year, it was a Sunday, the sky was a perfectly ordinary blue, my hair was brown, we lived by a river. It was a river of blood. I did not know why it was a river of blood but it was just that, a river of blood. It was red. It was really red.
It was really, really red.
And as I said before, it was the first day of February. And again, it was my fifth year, which means I was five years old. And the sky was blue the way a sky is always blue, I said that already too. And my hair was brown like the color of brown things and like I said already, it was brown. The river was red, mostly. Really, really red.
[pages turn…engravings of really mundane things, like a picture of the sky. but black and white.]
caption: And like I said already, the sky was blue.
But it wasn’t really a river of blood, it only just looked like it, because it was red. And red is the color of blood. So when I was five and the sky was blue, I called it the ‘iver of Blood.’ And I thought my mom would laugh or say how clever I was, but she didn’t she just nodded and said, ‘Hmmph, well it is red, mostly.’
And my father said, “Red it is indeed.”
And my sister said, “Red, yes.”
And my brother said, “Not even crimson, just red.”
And my grampa said, “I’m color blind.” So I didn’t believe a word he said from then on.
But it was red, like a river of blood.
[Picture: A single brown eyeball.]
caption: Like my hair, my eyeball was brown too.
[except it too, is black and white, and this sentence is nowhere to be found in the text]
more to come…