Picture This: The Near-sighted Monkey Book

"I don’t think it is unconscious. Children and babies are much deeper thinkers than they’ve been given credit for. Harold is not exceptional in being a brilliant young child, because I think most young children are much more brilliant thinkers than adults often realise. That’s exactly right. That’s what I love about it. She has suggestions in there to get everybody drawing: just get your pencil moving, just start making dots, doodles. Although at one point she says doodling is a word she doesn’t like for an activity that she loves: just making the marks and seeing what happens, without knowing where it may take you is what matters. Be like Harold: let yourself go on that journey without worrying too much at the outset about where you’re going to end up. “In order to make a drawing that really communicates the action of the person that you’re drawing from life, you have to feel that action in your own body” I’ve taught art at all levels, from kindergarten to graduate school. Around third- or fourth-grade children start to get self-conscious, more aware of what others think of them, and that extends to drawing. Some kids get designated as good at drawing. Other children start seeing themselves as people that don’t draw well. Very early on, there’s this idea of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ drawing, and with it comes embarrassment when you do a supposedly ugly drawing as opposed to something good or beautiful. Linda Barry really celebrates the bad drawings, the awkward drawings, as the ones that are really interesting and fun."