Tuesday's Little Bit of Thought

Dear Mrs. Brooks,

I wish to clarify that I am not now, nor have I ever been, an exotic dancer.
I work at Home Depot and I told my daughter how hectic it was last week before the blizzard hit.
I told her we sold out every single shovel we had, and then I found one more in the back room,
and that several people were fighting over who would get it.
Her picture doesn't show me dancing around a pole. It's supposed to depict me selling the last snow shovel we had at Home Depot.
From now on I will remember to check her homework more thoroughly before she turns it in.

Sincerely,
Jan Richards

I got this from Edith. I laughed when I thought of the idea but not the drawing, because the drawing was done by an adult. Children don't draw stick figures nor do they make things the same size. Children will not draw hair that way nor will they make every child the same. Do you see the length of the mother's hair? it would never be that cut and dry - no pun intended.

And last but not least, no child, except my son, Brendan, would have punctuated the drawing that way.

Children's art is amazing for what it can do, and rarely can adults mimic what a child does. It's the same way in trying to catch a child's personality on paper - in a novel, in dialogue. I have a child named Helen Catrina in a recently published novel, and she says very little. Mostly because children converse simply. It was the hardest dialogue I wrote.

In art, children don't pay attention to a whole lot of detail - like the money in this picture. The dollars would have been much bigger. Also, the body parts would never be the same proportion. Children draw bodies as they see them. The heads are usually much bigger than they need to be, and the bodies are nearly always round. There are arms if the child is a do-er. If the child is a hugger, the arms are proportionately bigger. If the child is a watcher, the body will have very little arm show. Fingers are a later development and usually designate something being done.

Faces are always interesting. A smile on a child's face dentotes a happy child. Some children don't put much face on their drawings. They leave the eyes pupil-less. This can be unnerving for an adult who carries the thought one step further than the child.

Clothes are also a last step like hair. Most clothes are drawn on as an afterthought, so you can see the skeleton underneath. It's hilarious. Then the child tries desperately to cover up the body with the clothes.

Children are their own best interpreters. As we write for kids, as we listen and try to copy what they do, we never get it right. It's the hardest thing to do well because it's so simple and there is no guile.