Draw!

Raúl Colón is an award-winning artist. His creativity and imagination are quite impressive. This book about animals of Africa presents a non-verbal set of illustrations in a game preserve setting. An asthmatic child, confined to his bed, is depicted as the artist. The illustrations are rendered in watercolors and various types of colored pencils. Although it is a fun book and many preschool children will enjoy the drawings, it does not represent Africa in general or even a specific country. The book provides an opportunity for a student to practice oral and written skills by describing the artist’s imagined interaction with animals or it might be worth using in an art class to stimulate students in learning drawing skills and proportions of generic animal images, but it provides nothing of substance about Africa. Indeed it reinforces the stereotype of Africa as the wild kingdom.