Green Pencils and Shades of Green: Symbol Analysis in One Two Three by Laurie Frankel

The Green Pencil RitualnIn Laurie Frankel's One Two Three, the green pencils that Monday (Two) gathers on rainy days are far more than a crafting supply. They are the material expression of the novel's central concerns: how the sisters construct meaning, communicate without conventional speech, and hold onto a world that is quietly changing around them.nnThe symbol first appears in Chapter 3, narrated by Monday. On a rainy summer day—a green day, as she calls it—she collects all the shades of green pencils in alphabetical order: avocado, forest, kelly, mint, moss, olive. She adds white paper, an empty cereal box, scissors, glue, and a ruler, then retreats to the upstairs hall closet for the twenty-seven to twenty-nine minutes before her mother returns from work. There she cuts a four-by-six-inch rectangle from the cereal box, covers it with paper, and draws a forest of trees: oaks, firs, maples, pines, pear trees, and a eucalyptus. On the back she writes a short message to One (Mab), then slides the finished postcard under the door of the room the triplets share.nnThis is not a one-time event. The new postcard joins 246 others already tacked up on the wall—a handmade archive of a private correspondence that has been running for years.nn## Green as Attention to the Natural WorldnnThe green pencils encode a specific kind of looking. Monday does not reach for a generic green; she distinguishes avocado from forest, kelly from mint, moss from olive. This precision mirrors the novel's broader insistence on careful observation. Mirabel notes that change is slow and that if you are not paying attention, you will miss it. The shades of green are a discipline of attention—a way of noticing the world in its particularity rather than as a blur.nnThe choice of trees is also deliberate. Monday explains that trees are among the best things to draw on rainy, green days. She could draw frogs or grass, but frogs' tongues are pink and grass is boring. Trees, by contrast, can be built from layers of green: olive and forest layered together make a green-brown that works for trunks and branches. The forest she draws is a product of observation and technique, not mere decoration.nn## Green as Constructed TruthnnThe most striking aspect of the green pencil scene is Monday's acknowledgment that her forest is not literally true. She knows that oaks, firs, maples, pines, pear trees, and eucalyptus do not grow together in any real forest. But she insists this does not matter: it does not matter if it is true.nnThis moment connects directly to the novel's opening epigraph from James Baldwin, which asserts that the world lies open before the reader and need not be accepted or rejected as it was upon arrival. The postcard forest is a small act of world-building—an imagined landscape that the sisters can inhabit even though it does not exist. It also echoes the essay prompt Mrs. Shriver assigns in Chapter 2, which asks students to write about their earliest memory and its relation to truth. Mab remembers being in the womb with her sisters, a memory others might dismiss as impossible, but she insists it is true because the sisters were never alone. The green pencil forest operates on the same logic: it is not factually accurate, but it is emotionally and creatively true.nnThis is the novel's memory as constructed truth theme in miniature. The postcards are not records of what happened; they are inventions that carry meaning anyway.nn## Green as Connection and CommunicationnnThe postcards are also a form of speech. Monday cannot rely on conventional communication the way her sisters can—Mirabel has idioglossia and uses a tablet with an app to speak—but the postcards are a language of their own. They are addressed to One, and Monday is confident Mab will know who the postcard is for even though it is faceup and unsigned. The 246 postcards already on the wall are evidence of a long-running conversation conducted in paper, glue, and green pencil.nnThis connects to the theme of communication beyond speech. The sisters have developed their own shorthand—One, Two, Three—and their own ways of understanding each other. The postcards are another channel in that private network. They are also a form of interdependent identity: the postcards are made by one sister for another, and they only make sense within the context of the triplet bond.nnThe green pencils are also tied to the sisters' shared physical space. The postcard is slid under the door of the converted dining room where all three sisters sleep, beneath the faded gold foil stars Mab stapled to the ceiling in fifth grade. The room is a collaborative artwork—Mab's stars above, Monday's postcards on the wall—and the green pencils are one of the tools that build this shared world.nn## Green and ChangennThe green pencils also connect to the theme of change in a static world. Bourne is a town where nothing ever gets built, as Mirabel observes. The backhoe she spots on Maple Avenue is astonishing precisely because it is out of place. The green pencils are part of the sisters' response to this stasis: they create their own worlds because the world around them does not change.nnBut the green day also marks a threshold. The postcard scene takes place the day before school starts, and the sisters are halfway through high school. The backhoe suggests something momentous may be about to begin. The green pencils are thus both a comfort ritual—a way of making something familiar and safe—and a marker of a moment when the static world may be about to shift.nnThe shades of green also carry a seasonal quality. Monday notes that enough shades of green will make a whole forest of trees if you choose the right season (summer) or the right part of the country (the part with evergreens). Green is not a single color but a spectrum that responds to context—summer versus evergreen country, olive layered over forest. This flexibility mirrors the novel's sense that identity and truth are not fixed but are shaped by circumstance and relationship.nn## Green as ResourcefulnessnnFinally, the green pencils are an emblem of creative resourcefulness under constraint. Monday makes postcards because she will never travel; she says that if she ever went anywhere, she would buy postcards, but it is more accurate to say she will never go anywhere. So she makes her own. She uses a cereal box because that is what is available. She works within a narrow window of time—twenty-seven to twenty-nine minutes before Mama gets home. The green pencils are the one luxury in this economy of scarcity, and they transform a cardboard rectangle into a gift.nnThis resourcefulness is shared across the sisters. Mab turns gold foil into a starry ceiling. Mirabel uses her one finely controlled limb and a tablet app to speak. The green pencils are part of a pattern of making something meaningful out of very little.nn## Study Questionsnn**1. Why does Monday draw trees that could not grow together in a real forest, and what does this reveal about the novel's treatment of truth?nnMonday knows that oaks, firs, maples, pines, pear trees, and eucalyptus do not naturally coexist, but she draws them anyway because it does not matter if it is true. This mirrors the novel's broader argument that truth is not always factual accuracy. Mab's memory of being in the womb is similarly impossible by conventional standards, yet she insists it is true because the sisters were never alone. The postcard forest is a constructed truth—a world the sisters build together that carries emotional and relational meaning even if it does not correspond to botanical reality.nn2. How do the green pencils function as a form of communication between the sisters?nnThe postcards are addressed to One (Mab) and are understood without a signature. Monday slides the postcard under the door and is certain Mab will know who it is for. The 246 postcards already on the wall form a long-running private correspondence. This parallels the sisters' other communication systems—the One/Two/Three shorthand, Mirabel's idioglossia, and the tablet app—and shows that meaning can be carried through objects as well as words.nn3. What does the green day concept reveal about how the sisters perceive the natural world?nnA green day is a rainy day, when the world becomes saturated with green. Monday's careful distinction among shades—avocado, forest, kelly, mint, moss, olive—shows a disciplined attention to the natural world's particularity. This connects to Mirabel's observation that change is slow and that you must pay attention or you will miss it. The green pencils are a tool for noticing and recording the world, even when the world itself seems static.nn4. How does the green pencil scene connect to the novel's epigraph from James Baldwin?**nnThe epigraph states that the world lies open before the reader and need not be accepted or rejected as it was upon arrival. Monday's postcard forest is a literal enactment of this idea: she does not accept the world as it is (a world where those trees do not grow together) but creates a world as it could be. The green pencils are the instrument of this creative refusal, and they connect to the novel's larger theme that the sisters are not bound to inherit the world unchanged.