Draw!

PreS-Gr 3--Based on the Afro-Puerto Rican artist's childhood, beloved and award-winning illustrator Colon's wordless work, created with watercolor and colored pencils, depicts a sickly boy who uses his creativity to escape the confines of his bed. Traveling through his drawings to Africa, the boy makes friends with the animals he encounters.

In Colon's (Baseball Is...) wordless fantasy, a boy lies on his bed, his sketchbook on the floor; he's lost in a large book titled Africa. As he takes up his sketchbook and begins to draw, small full-color panels of himself setting off across the African veldt sail forth from his mind like thought balloons. On the next page, he's entered his fantasy fully; he's in the African grasslands, carrying his drawing supplies and waving to a nearby elephant. After obligingly allowing its portrait to be drawn, the elephant carries the boy to meet other animals who pose for him--zebras, giraffes, and hippos. A rhinoceros portrait ends in near-calamity; a gang of baboons draw the boy. After a tender goodbye to the elephant, another series of sunlit panels retreats into the boy's head as he returns to real life. Colon's visual signature is the use of finely combed lines to trace the contours of his figures, a technique that's at once delicate and sensuous. It's a strongly developed and executed account of a childhood fantasy, urging all young artists to dream and to draw. Ages 4-8. Agency: Morgan Gaynin Inc. (Sept.)