I Don't Draw, I Color!

by Adam Lehrhaupt, Felicita Sala (Illustrator)

Overview

Adam Lehrhaupt tells a tale of the power of color in this exploration of creativity that is sure to inspire readers and budding artists!

Isn’t it fun to color?
Every color has a feeling,
just like we do.
Yellow makes us feel happy.
Dark blue can make us feel sad.
Red can seem angry.
Black can look scary.
What color do you feel like today?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781481462754
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books
Publication date:	03/21/2017
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	8.10(w) x 10.20(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Adam Lehrhaupt’s first picture book, Warning: Do Not Open This Book!, received the E.B. White Read Aloud Honor Award, was an ALA Notable Book, and a HuffPost Notable Book. School Library Journal called it, “More fun than a barrel of monkeys.” He is also the author of Please, Open This Book!, which was named a Wanda Gag Comstock Read Aloud Honor Book, and Idea Jar. Adam has traveled to six continents, performed on Broadway, and lived on a communal farm. He currently lives in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with his wife, sons, and two bizarre dogs. Visit him online at AdamLehrhaupt.com.

Felicita Sala is a self-taught illustrator and painter. She has a degree in philosophy from the University of Western Australia. She now lives and works in Rome. She draws inspiration from nature, children, mid-century illustration, folk art, and architecture.

Editorial Reviews

"This attractive, approachable book offers a variety of teachable themes, including basic art-themed storytime. — Booklist

February 15, 2017 - Booklist

"Sala’s illustrations demonstrate how varying color, line thickness, and intensity can indicate different
emotions. (What’s actually being celebrated here is more akin to abstract expressionism
than simply coloring.) For children who equate drawing ability with
artistic ability, this book will open new and more accessible avenues for creative
expression. Lehrhaupt ends the book on the question, “What colors are you?”—
an open-ended invitation for readers to explore the color wheel and look past
their own self-perceived artistic limitations.' The Horn Book magazine

March/April 2017 - Horn Book Magazine

"This attractive, approachable book offers a variety of teachable themes, including basic art-themed storytime. — Booklist

February 15, 2017 - Booklist

03/01/2017
PreS-Gr 2—A young boy provides examples of his drawings to prove that he cannot draw, and chooses instead to express himself through color. "My puppies look like mush./My cars look like lumps," he says. But with color he can reveal his feelings and impressions: yellow for happy, red for angry, black for scary. Sala's illustrations, rendered in watercolor, colored pencil, and crayon, depict a curly-haired child shown at first in black-and-white as he draws his less than satisfactory childlike images. When he talks about using color, though, the white ground comes alive with "thick" or "thin," "squiggly" or "jagged" lines. There are splashes of bright yellow and drips of "sad" blue. A rainbow of colors bursts from the boy's hand to indicate that he can have several feelings at the same time. "I'm a whole jumble of things…a colorful masterpiece," he declares as his Technicolor image fills the page. Encouraging experimentation with color ("What colors are you?") is fine, but this offering may also have the negative effect of quashing children's artistic efforts. Readers will very likely recognize that the protagonist's drawings closely resemble their own artwork, and could become discouraged by his belittling comments. VERDICT Peter Reynolds's Ish conveys the far more positive message that drawings do not have to be perfectly representational to be of value. An additional purchase.—Marianne Saccardi, Children's Literature Consultant, Cambridge, MA

School Library Journal

2016-12-14
A small child colors instead of drawing.In this first-person narrator's opinion, other kids are really good at drawing, but he isn't. Drawing, here, means being representational and realistic. Young readers will notice immediately that the child's drawings, which the narrator denigrates, look like their own drawings. Sala's child-style portrayals of puppies, people, and cars are no less skilled than—and quite similar to—typical children's work; if this child's drawings are so bad they shouldn't be attempted, should readers stop drawing too? Never revisiting this assumption, the child seeks expression with artwork but "without drawing anything." The child uses various hues and types of line (thick, thin, squiggly, jagged) to portray moods (happy, sad, angry,) and vibes (scary; "something full of life"). However, the premise that conveying mood through color and abstract form requires less sophistication than representational drawing is false. Making a self-portrait, this white protagonist imagines hues that will capture various aspects of personality, including "a messy, dark brown"—unfortunately linking brownness with messiness. The watercolor, pencil, and crayon illustrations cohere less than E.B. Lewis' in Angela Johnson's Lily Brown's Paintings (2007), a better choice about a child-artist, with child style beautifully integrated; to explore a dynamic relationship between color and mood, see Tameka Fryer Brown and Shane W. Evans' My Cold Plum Lemon Pie Bluesy Mood (2013). Nothing new—and more discouraging than most, to boot. (Picture book. 3-6)

Kirkus Reviews