Availability:
Library | Call Number | Format | Status | Item Holds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Canton Public Library | FIC HARPER E | J BOOK | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
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Bound With These Titles
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Summary
Summary
Award-winning author and illustrator Charise Mericle Harper delivers a fantastically funny picture book about doing the impossible: drawing a horse. A children's metafiction book about creativity and imaginative play centered around an art lesson, Harper cleverly shows readers how drawings are a collection of recognizable shapes put together to create something new.
Elementary-aged readers will delight as the simple "nothing shape" becomes a cat, a squirrel, a beaver, a bunny, a dog, a turtle, and a bear. But what about a horse? The cat really wants a horse. But . . . the book cannot draw a horse. Can the quick-draw book appease the horse-obsessed cat with an impressive collection of horse-y alternatives (all created from the same "nothing shape")? Or will the cat finally get a horse?
Harper's quirky, contemporary voice and kid-friendly comic illustration style is on full display in this hilarious picture book with art education appeal. I Cannot Draw a Horse invites young readers into the narrative fun, as do such modern classics as Press Here by Hervé Tullet, Never Let a Unicorn Scribble by Diane Alber and The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt.
Hardcover picture book; 48 pages; 10 x 10 in.
Reviews (3)
School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 2--"This is my shape," begins a never-seen narrator on a page showing a firmly outlined blue gumdrop. When the shape complains that it is a nothing, the narrator turns it into a cat. "I want a horse," demands the cat. But horses are hard to draw, so the narrator proceeds to cajole the cat into accepting things that are easier to draw: squirrel, beaver, bunny, dog. Of course, dogs chase cats, who then need hills and skateboards in order to escape. And thus, a zany exchange ensues with the unreasonable cat continuing to demand a fun, fast horse and the narrator diverting him with all manner of gumdrop-shaped alternatives. When the artist discovers that it is, indeed, possible to draw a horse, that horse has no interest in running. He wants a bicycle, which is simply too hard to draw. With antecedents in Harold and the Purple Crayon and the "Elephant and Piggie" books, Harper wields her own mischievous humor. Simple, childlike lines are filled with flat colors on an expansive graph paper ground. VERDICT An easy-to-read text with exclamatory speech bubbles and pictorial antics will tickle funny bones in this off-kilter circular story.--Jan Aldrich Solow
Publisher's Weekly Review
"This is my shape," an unseen narrator announces, introducing a smallish gray mound set against a field of graph paper. It doesn't seem like much (even the shape itself says so), but with a few deft adds, it becomes a schematic cat with black-lined features. Bravo! But the cat, who speaks in yellow dialogue balloons, has a mind of its own, and has no interest in the animals that the narrator draws via the same basic shape. The cat reveals its desire for a "fun, fast friend"--a horse--which is the one thing that the narrator won't even attempt: "A horse is hard to draw." Navigating a landscape filled with objects based on the same thumbnail form, the cat continues its bargaining with "I WANT A HORSE! I WANT A HORSE! I WANT A HORSE!" before wisely changing course and fashioning a "YOU CAN DRAW A HORSE" trophy for the narrator. "You must really believe in me. I will try something new," the voice says, and turns to create an adorable horse--one that proves equally demanding in its own difficult-to-draw request. This simply rendered meta read-aloud by Harper (Bad Sister) raises a host of interesting questions about self-imposed limitations as well as possibilities for growth. Ages 3--8. Agent: Linda Pratt, Wernick & Pratt. (Sept.)
Booklist Review
The book's opening line states, "This is my shape." A gray gumdroplike thing, thinly outlined in black, the shape concernedly declares, "I am a nothing shape." The artist-narrator responds by adding more gumdrops--some tiny, others elongated--plus a whiskered face. Voilà, a cat! The first thing the newly minted cat does is request a horse. The narrator explains that they cannot draw a horse, but they try to make the cat happy by modifying the trusty gumdrop into a surprising number of figures and objects--a beaver, a turtle hatching from an egg, a bear living in a large house, a barking dog that regrettably likes chasing the cat (a hastily added hill tires the pooch, thank goodness), and so on. Still determined to get a horse, the cat gives the artist a pep talk that finally results in a horse friend--using the same shape! Unfortunately, the horse wants a bicycle . . . This book is clever in its simple story and imaginative, doodlelike illustrations, which are printed on pages like graph paper. Easy text appears in both standard form and yellow speech bubbles, giving it an easy-to-follow, graphic-novel feel. Creative and loaded with humor, this story will have kids giggling in seconds and trying their hand at drawing a horse--or at least a gumdrop.