In a wonderfully told story without a single word except for the title of the book his hero is reading, Raul Colon takes us on safari in Draw! Beginning in a boy’s bedroom as he looks at a book titled Africa with his safari hat and sketchpad nearby, the boy quickly picks up an imaginary elephant who will journey with him.
No words are necessary to discover, with the boy, the animals he encounters through his binoculars on his expedition and draws into his sketchpad. There’s subtle humor in the elephant’s admiration of himself in the boy’s sketch, in the zebras holding their pose for their picture, and in the boy dashing to paint giraffes on the move. It was quite hard to pick a favorite scene until the boy got into trouble, but I did love his escape from the rhinoceros! His imaginary trip ends back in his bed with a post script picture as he shares his drawings with his classmates the next day at school.
In the author’s note, Raul describes the story as his own. As a boy, he loved both books and drawing and often took imaginary journeys as he stayed in his room and drew pictures.
When I find a book like this, I’m glad I live by the maxim that “You are never too old for picture books,” but I actually have an ulterior motive for buying this one. I think it will be a perfect gift for a boy who is turning six in a week and says he wants to be an artist when he grows up.
