Don't Think of Tigers
Review posted December 26, 2024.
Random House, 2024. 32 pages.
Review written December 17, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review
The cover of this picture book is brilliant - one look and you know what's going on. And you're absolutely thinking of tigers.
Sure enough, the author sets up the premise that whatever you picture in your mind, he will draw on the next page. He starts with a picture of a cow doing ballet to show it works. After that, we get these instructions:
But before we start, I've just got one thing to ask you.
I really, really can't draw tigers, so whatever you do, please
DON'T THINK OF TIGERS!
All right - now picture ANYTHING you like.
(Just no tigers.)
You guessed it, there's a tiger on the next page, and, sure enough, it's not a very good picture of a tiger.
And so the silly book goes, trying more and more silly things to keep the reader from thinking of tigers and showing more and more silly drawings of tigers, though they're getting a little better as it goes.
At the end, he asks the reader to think of every part of the tiger - stripes and whiskers and eyes and tail - and the result is a beautiful picture of a tiger walking out of the jungle. And he finishes up by asking the reader to draw what he's thinking of.
And then - there's a note at the back. There's a small picture of an ugly painting of a kid, and he tells about when he was in school and painted a picture of himself and an older kid saw it and told him he better not ever try to be an artist.
I felt horrible. And so from that day, for a very long time, I stopped painting or drawing or sketching. I'd love to tell you that the boy was wrong and that I was actually an artistic genius.
But do you know what? My picture really was terrible. It really was a very, very bad painting.
(I had tried to use all of the colors to paint my face, and it ended up messy and lumpy and my eyes were askew and my nose looked like a moldy mushroom.)
But I just wish someone had told me back then that making bad pictures is part of learning to make good ones. It's the same with riding a bike or learning to swim. No one on Earth has ever been very good the first time they tried anything.
Every artist out there has made tons of awful paintings and hideous drawings and horrible sketches.
So I want to encourage you to make bad pictures! Let's make lots and lots of stinkers!
Because that's the only way to make good ones.
Now, I don't necessarily like books where the point has to be spelled out. But the main part of this book is so much silly fun, I don't mind a serious Author's Note at the end with a really great message.
So there you have it: Delightfully silly fun combined with overcoming fear of doing something poorly. Now to just find a kid to share it with.