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Title: Dog Loves Drawing
Author/Illustrator: Louise Yates
Publisher: Alfred A Knopf/Random House
ISBN: 978-0375870675
Published: August 2012
Recommended Age: 4 and up

My Rating: 4/5 stars

Review copy received from publisher in exchange for an honest review.

The beautiful pencil-and-watercolor drawings in Dog Loves Drawing are what initially grabbed my attention and drew me into this book. I love how Dog, the main character, is drawn as if he is a flat pencil drawing, while the tools he uses–colored pencils–look so real it almost seems like you can pick them out of the book. It’s a beautiful contrast, made all the more poignant when the dog is the one creating drawings in the book.

In Dog Loves Drawing, Dog, at home in his bookshop, receives a book without words from his aunt–a sketchbook. He begins to draw–starting with a door that he steps through onto an empty page–and his drawings come alive. Together with the characters Dog sketches (a stickman, duck, owl, and crab), they all have an adventure, each character drawing bits of the vehicles or surrounding world that help their adventure come alive–riding a train, sailing on a boat, landing on an island where duck drew a monster that chased them around until Dog saved the day by drawing a door,leaping through it and landing back in his bookshore. Dog draws his friends safe and the monster held at bay.

The text was written well, but I wished at times that there was a bit more connectedness or consequences from the things they drew (though there was with the monster). They went from a train to a boat for no reason that I could
see, and drew food but we didn’t hear them eat it (though we did see that it disappeared). But overall, the story is enjoyable, pleasing, and great fun.

Yates’ characters are expressive and full of energy. It looks almost like a drawing (Dog) is drawing other drawings to life, though they are still clearly two-dimensional drawings. Dog is the most vivid and fully-drawn character–as he should be since he’s supposed to be the most real (as is his aunt, and the people in his bookstore), and the characters he draw look more like a very talented child might draw. This can help a child reader feel that drawings they create might come to life just like Dog’s drawings did. And for me this is emphasized by the very realistic drawing implements (colored pencils and watercolor brushes).

The background is a bright, clean white–perfect for the pages of a sketchbook–and Dog and the characters and scenery they draw, plus big three-dimensional drawing and painting tools–all stand out brightly on the page, and really feel alive. I love that the characters seem to move right across the edge of the page onto the next page. I also love that the pencils and paintbrushes are sometimes still drawing the drawings that are coming alive (especially in the train rushing by).

There is something highly appealing about thinking that something we draw, and our imagination, can make our drawings come alive and really happen. Readers who like Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson, Flyaway Katie by Polly Dunbar, Not a Box by Antoinette Portis, and Ish by Peter H Reynolds will especially enjoy this book.

This is an imaginative, playful, whimsical story that is sure to spark imagination and an interest in doodling and art. Dog Loves Drawing is a delight. Highly recommended!

Good for encouraging: Imagination; Creativity; Playfulness; Doodling, drawing, and painting; Love of art; Love of Books. Give kids this book, and a sketchbook and some drawing tools, and watch them have a blast!

I know some schools are already back hard at work, but we’ve got another couple of weeks before term starts for us, so here’s one more round up of activity sheets available for free from children’s authors and illustrators.

Click on the relevant image or coloured link to be taken to activity sheets you can download.

I absolutely love Louise Yates’ books and I know my kids will enjoy the range of activity sheets she has available on her website.

Mo Willems has a new colouring page up every month, plus several online activities to keep Pigeon, Pig and Elephant fans happy.

At Chris Riddell’s site, carefully hidden away under “Hairstyles of American Civil War Generals” (sic!) there are activities for fans of Ottoline and The Emperor of Absurdia.

Almost exactly a year ago I fell in love with Steve Cole. I’m still in love with him, and I know M will be delighted to discover there are plenty of activities of Steve’s website, covering all his different books. I’m particularly looking forward to making the Astrosaurs puppets with M.

US born but Scotland-based author/illustrator Teresa Flavin has some lovely bookplates and fun mazes to share with us.

That’s the last lot of free activity sheets I’ll be linking to this summer. The full collection can be found here. I hope you’ve found them fun and useful, I know I have – I’m most g

Finding videos of the Voldemort vs. Mary Poppins nuttiness online was surprisingly difficult.  Finally I found a sort of recap of the Olympic 2012 opening ceremonies with reference to the rise of the great children’s literature villains (The Queen of Hearts, a Disney-esque Cruella de Ville, Captain Hook, and Voldemort) and their destruction at the hands of 30 Mary Poppins.  “A sweeping rambling narrative” is as accurate an interpretation of what happened as any I could come up with.  You’ll see the references at 1:00 in this video.

And since we’re already on the topic of Harry Potter (admittedly we are almost always on that topic) I sure hope you guys had a chance to see the first installment of Harry Potter and the Ten Years Later.  I thought it was rather well done.  Sort of makes me want to see the whole series now.

Thanks to Boing Boing for the link.

And now for a bloody effective book trailer.  If the point of such trailers is to cause the reader an immediate and almost impossible to resist urge to pick up the book and read it, Leave Your Sleep as edited by Natalie Merchant (yes, that Natalie Merchant) now has that hold on me.  It does not hurt that the songs featured here, paired with Barbara McClintock’s illustrations, are a delight.  A sheer, as they say, delight.

Resist it if you can.  And, might I say, this is one of the more logical uses of a celebrity getting involved in children’s literature that I’ve seen.  I was seated next to Ms. Merchant at a BEA lunch and to my delight she turned out to be a huge Barbara McClintock fan long before this book.  She said this, so I decided to quiz her by asking what she knew.  Without missing a beat she rattled off everything from The Gingerbread Man to Adele and Simon to the Aesop’s Fables Ms. McClintock did years ago.  Woman knows her stuff.

Okay, gear switch.  Obviously if I’m showing a Louis CK video then this is not going to be workplace friendly, though honestly aside from one off-white phrase this is downright pure for Louis.  When I read in a recent Entertainment Weekly article that he hated Clifford the Big Red Dog with a passion that eclipses the white hot sun I knew I had to find video proof.  Proof I found, and I love how he pairs Clifford with Narnia.  If Louis put out a CD that was just children’s book rants . . . okay, that’s a ridiculous dream.  But a dream I now have!

And now Louise Yates interviews Quentin Blake.  Because I can.

Thanks to Watch. Connect. Read. for the link!

And for the final off-topic video, awwwwww.  Baby goats.  Manic, remorseless baby goats.  Sadly adorable.

Thanks to mom for the link.

Every time we open a book we set off on an journey. We don’t know where we’re going, we don’t know who we’ll meet. We just hope we’ll come out (more) alive at the end. Now imagine if you could make your dream adventure come true… Who would you invite to join you? What provisions would you take? Where would you go?

Louise Yates’ wonderfully warm, deliciously drawn Dog Loves Drawing is all about exactly this. Friends. Cake. A little bit of danger. Being able to create your own adventure.

And the power of imagination and pencils on paper.

Dog, who you may already know owns a bookshop, receives an unusual type of book from his Aunt: a book full of blank pages. Inscribed inside the front cover is an exciting invitation:

Dog enthusiastically dives in, draws a door and, yes, walks through into his own adventure.

Starting with the simplest of stick men, Dog draws friends and before long they are off exploring a world they create as they go along. They want sandwiches? They draw sandwiches. They want to explore? They draw a boat. Then for fun, Dog’s friend, Duck, draws a Monster…. oh no! How will Dog and his friends escape? Will Dog make it back to the bookshop safely?

Yates has made a perfect picture book with Dog Loves Drawing. The story is so alluring for kids (I want something? I’ll draw it and make it come to life! Feel the power in my fingers!) and it is told with warmth and humour. The little impishness that drives Duck to draw a monster is so believable and causes that addictive rush of adrenalin that makes a story feel so satisfying, once safe and sound again.

Yates’ illustrations are deceptively simple. They do indeed look like something a young child reading the book might be able to sketch for themselves; just like the words, the pictures are empowering! Yet they are also light and graceful. The facial expressions of the adventurers are a particular delight (we like Duck and Owl arguing, and the look of bliss on Stick Man’s face when travelling at speed in the steam train), lifting Dog and his friends off the page and into living breathing characters.

I defy you to read this book and NOT want to get drawing straight away!

After reading this book for the very first time I succumbed, in that heady rush of new love, to getting something I’ve been hankering after for a long time – a proper pencil sharpener!

I honestly think it is a thing of beauty. And even now, at 38, sharpening pencils holds an addictive sway over me! I love the sound as the shavings are made, and then the rainbow dust that is created has its own magic, to say nothing of the end result:

5 Comments on Ever needed some encouragement to get drawing?, last added: 4/26/2012