I had recently read Elizabeth Haidle’s Before They Were Artists, and so sought out more of her work. One of those works is her 2025 picture book Drawing is…Your Guide to Scribbled Adventures.
I’m glad I did, and the first reason is the difference in artistic style. The images in Before They Were Artists were functional and helped me understand the biographies shared, but those here are much livelier and more varied. They illustrate, but they are also more artistic and personal.
There was also a fairly standard pace and structure in that earlier book, whereas this surges, speeding up and slowing down. Since this happens for the first time when the book is talking about drawing as traveling and images of speed…then discussions of slowing down, the structure and images work to reinforce the concepts well.
The book’s structure is also conceptually episodic. It opens with “Drawing is…” then a scribble and “What IS drawing?” It re-presents the prompt several times, and each times finishes it a different way, So, drawing is traveling, wondering, focusing, feeling, growing, not-knowing, and then, finally, magic.
This book is about art, but also about conceptual play: it invites kids to imagine changes in speed, place, position, and scale. It moves between images that are well-executed but fairly common/tradition in children’s literature to things that are much less so, like pages explaining and illustrating the Surrealist approach to life and art. It shows, discusses, explains, and models specific aspects of visual representation (like texture) and different approaches to art. Throughout, it is inclusive and supportive: it invites children to create, and assures them they already do.
This book will appeal to certain types of kids and certain types of adults: those who appreciate images, those at ease with exploration and experimentation, those who can handle being a bit overwhelmed, and those who are open to learning, and learn through opening.
