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Drawing Is . . . hands young artists a few basic art principles and encourages them to let their imaginations run wild.
Drawing Is … Your Guide to Scribbled Adventures by Elizabeth Haidle. Tundra, 2025. 72 pages.
- Reading Level: Middle Grades, ages 10-12
- Recommended For: Ages 8-15
Do you have what it takes to draw? The book offers a quick diagnostic test, beginning with the questions “Have you blinked recently?” And “Are you inhaling?” That should give you a clue: any warm body can draw, because it’s not a matter of talent but simply a matter of being alive and giving yourself permission to create. “Your hand and your imagination are working together. It’s a magical thing.” Indeed it is; simply being able to draw a stick figure engaged in some kind of action is rather magical, but the book offers some basic tutorials to help the reader move beyond stick figures.
These are scattered throughout the text: two-page spreads on lines and dots, scale, contrast, texture, and pattern. With these few tools, aimless doodlers and aspiring artists alike can mix and match and expand and build. Most of all, they can let their minds guide their pencils freely over the page, with a word of inspiration from Emily Dickinson: “Nothing is the beginning of Everything.”
A few decades ago, a book called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain caused a mini-earthquake in art instruction. This book takes a similar nonconformist approach: less an instructional manual than an exercise in imagination-stretching and self-discovery. The last six pages include specific exercises for both. It’s a different approach but could be an effective one for the wigglers and interrupters in the house. Settle them down in this book and see what happens.
Considerations: None
Bottom Line: An unusual approach to drawing, but probably effective for some children.
Recommended Reading at Redeemed Reader
- Book Review: In Calling All Minds, Temple Grandin encourages young readers to “think differently.”
- Reflection: Read Janie’s thoughts on “The Power of a Picture”
- Booklist Resource: See Art and the Picture Book: A Redeemed Reader Booklist
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