Drawing and Learning About Cats: Using Shapes and Lines

Practically Paradise Blog, School Library Journal - Diane Chen

"Drawing books vary greatly in depth, audience, and text. One of the easiest sets I've found for my little ones in elementary is Picture Window Books' Sketch It! series. Let's look at Drawing and Learning About Cats: Using Shapes and Lines by Amy Bailey Muehlenhardt. Feel free to go look at the others listed (Bugs, Cars, Cats, Dinosaurs, Dogs, Faces, Fashion, Fish, Horses, Jungle Animals, Monsters, Monster Trucks), but I'm focusing on cats, people! The Sketch It! series consists of 24-page books with 7 steps on each double-page spread. The page limit focuses drawing upon 8 specific types within each book. Cats focuses on: American Shorthair; Siamese; Burmese; Siberian; Cornish Rex; Persian; Turkish Angora; and Sphynx. Amy Bailey Muehlenhardt utilizes the basics of drawing with simple shapes and lines. I appreciate this book for it's application to geometry skills and hope teachers are creative in their usage. When I met Amy last summer in Minnesota, she emphasized her belief as stated in the very beginning of this book: “Everyone Is an Artist. There is no right or wrong way to draw! With a little patience and some practice, anyone can learn to draw.” In many ways Amy has cut through many difficult art techniques to bring sketching to a level where every reader's fingers itch to try. Amy encourages artists to practice and to stop at whichever step is comfortable for them at their drawing level. There is a big jump between step 6 and 7. How wonderful to have a book where the author suggests you personally decide how deeply you the reader want to delve. Does this series meet everyone's needs? Nope. This is a very focused, beginning level drawing book that has been carefully designed for the youngest artist. Would I like the book to be longer? You betcha, but I have seen 5 year olds drawing while looking at books like this. Any art book which can survive 5 checkouts is doing well. Fortunately these are reinforced inside and seem designed to lie flat to withstand the hardest abuse they'll take… -http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/830000283/post/1100035910.html" - Practically Paradise Blog, School Library Journal

November 1, 2008