Review by Booklist Review
Imagine you were born before the invention of drawing more than thirty thousand years ago. A boy with shaggy red hair dressed in jeans, his back to the viewer, becomes a boy with shaggy red hair dressed in animal skins on the next page. He lives in a cave with a large multigenerational family and spends his time watching deer and bears and looking at clouds. He alone sees shapes where others see, for instance, just a stone. A stare down with a woolly mammoth pushes the boy to recreate its massive shape on the cave wall. And though his family at first fears the drawing's magic, before long they're drawing, too. An author's note introduces French cave drawings, and notes no one knows who made the world's first drawing. Despite the disclaimer, however, many will see this as fact as well as fancy, in part because of the emphatic audience-directed narrative. The line, acrylic, and colored-pencil art, which fills up each spread, has the buoyant feeling of discovery and is clever in the way it turns imaginings into pictures. A way to think about the start of art.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this playful account, Caldecott Medalist Gerstein (The Man Who Walked Between the Towers) suggests how and why drawing was invented, imaginatively drawing from an archeological find of cave drawings and a nearby child's footprint. Second-person narration immediately pulls readers in: "Imagine... you were born before the invention of drawing." A shaggy-haired modern boy, colored pencils in his back pockets, and a dog stand in front of a blank canvas. Opposite, the boy is transported. It's 30,000 years earlier, and he has a wolf at his side. When he encounters a woolly mammoth, the boy shares the experience, using a burnt stick to depict the giant animal on a cave wall. Gerstein's mixed-media spreads feature a mostly blue and brown palette, and thin, rainbow-hued brushstrokes add texture and vividness. The power and intrinsic reward of making art is revealed as the boy animatedly draws his mammoth over several panels-to the fear, then fascination, of his family. Artists see the world differently, but Gerstein suggests their true gift lies in allowing others to share in their visions. Ages 3-6. Agent: Joan Raines, Raines & Raines. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Horn Book Review
Gerstein explores the imaginative feat it must have been to invent drawing -- the two-dimensional depiction of a three-dimensional world. Noting that there exist thirty-thousand-year-old cave drawings (and in the same cave, a child's footprint), the offstage narrator begins by addressing a jeans-clad kid who's about to draw a picture: "Imagine. . .You were born before the invention of drawing. . .You live in a cave. . .You love to watch animals." The pictures then flash back to a prehistoric child (a ringer for the modern-day one), who is a close observer of real animals, finding their images in clouds, rocks, and the shadows on cave walls. After his skeptical father dismisses his tale about an awesome woolly mammoth, the child is inspired by his encounter with the creature, and by his own dreams, to trace its image on the cave wall using a burnt stick ("Look! Here's the tail. . ."). At last, the others see: "Magic!" -- a thought Gerstein confirms without further exploring the revolutionary nature of the young artist's innovation. Echoing the simplicity of cave drawings with simply sketched figures, Gerstein enhances them with expressive pen-and-ink detail and luminous acrylics and colored pencil, in hues from pure sky blue to firelight. This empowering tale would pair nicely with Jeanette Winter's Kali's Song (rev. 3/12), which posits the invention of music in another prehistoric cave community. joanna rudge long (c) Copyright 2013. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Who made the world's first drawing--and why? Caldecott Medalist Gerstein gives his own imagined answer to this question in a polished tale of a boy living 30,000 years ago with his pet wolf and his very extended family. Using narrative direct address ("Imagine / you were born before the invention of drawing") to effectively bridge the gap between prehistoric times and the present, the story follows the boy on his fanciful discoveries of wooly mammoths in clouds, bears in stones and horses galloping on cave walls. The boy tries to show his family what he sees, but they see only a cloud, a rock and a cave. Gerstein's acrylic, pen-and-ink and colored-pencil mixed-media illustrations create depth and a sense of the past, as well as imparting liveliness and possibility to what could easily have become simply flat drawings. Like the boy in the story who finally, in frustration, picks up a charred stick and draws on the cave wall to make what he sees in his imagination plain to his family, readers may discover that they see pictures of their own within these layered illustrations. Solid storytelling, satisfying narrative circularity, and masterful, creative illustrations make this an inspiring story for young artists. (author's note) (Picture book. 2-6)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
