A artist sketches on a piece of paper on the wall. He's standing in a drawer. Then he's walking across the floor, but the line from his pencil continues, like a colorful piece of string. And to keep things bright and mysterious, all the book's text is written in white.
"Fud towed a line
In a town called Flag.
The line was so long
it began to drag..."
"Drawer in a Drawer" was the first children's picture book written by illustrator David Christiana, in 1990. And for a second I wondered if it was revealing the secret inner life of an illustrator. Its colorful and surreal drawings seem determined to show that there's a real magic in the act of drawing. Or maybe David Christiana is just trying to share the joy of being able to draw anything he wants.
"...he cut it into pieces
and built a box.
Filled it full of pillows,
Armadillos, and rocks."
But it was also impressed by the story's text. It's all written in rhyming couplets, with the arbitrary fun of a nursery rhyme. First it whizzes past that hill where Jack met Jill, then introduces Willy Nilly (and his windowsill). The story gets a bit complicated, but basically the artist's line becomes a box which captures the moon, who begs Fud for freedom.
"So Fud drew a ladder
up into the night
Took a dip in the Dipper
while the moon took flight."
Eventually Fud - whose last name is Butter - builds a ladder to the top of the sky. But then he curls up in his drawer for a good night's sleep. The breezy story gives Christiana lots of wild things to illustrate, like when he playfully scatters armadillos throughout several of the book's illustrations. But both his pictures and the text have a sense of wonder, feeling playful and confident, like a story from a dream.
"Not since 'Harold and the Purple Crayon' has a book so engaged the child's artistic imaginings," the book's jacket promises, praising Christiana for his "soft, luminous illustrations" that promise "mystery, magic, and the surreal..." And I really enjoyed this book - though according to Amazon, the School Library Journal was less enthusiastic. (They wrote that the magical line "comes across as an artistic indulgence rather than a clear symbol that children can relate to or understand, as they do Harold and the Purple Crayon.") That may be true, but this book still has a lot to offer. I think children would really appreciate the imaginative illustrations. And most children that I've read to really love a funny story that rhymes....