I Can’t Draw, an immediate illustrated book classic for elementary school

Max is an elementary school-aged kid. He also says that he can’t draw. I Can’t Draw is a great time of an illustrated book that dances between the first and third person as Max tries to convince readers that he can’t draw. This is the sibling book of The Day the Crayons Quit and Battle Bunny, which represent two fabulous books that are in our forever library. It teaches a mild lesson without being preachy, but has the main goal of being fun to read, which it effortlessly does for kindergarten through third, or maybe even fourth grade.

I Can’t Draw immediately introduces us to Max, and as we’ve said, he says that he can’t draw. He compares his horses to Eugene’s horses and there’s no comparison. His horses look regal and have shading details, while Max’s horses look like block letters with a bloated belly. The drawings also talk, Max’s horse says, “ok. That’s depressing”, that’s written in crayon. Eugene’s drawing the same horse character is in a different league and says “yup. I’m pretty incredible” in sharpened pencil with stellar penmanship

Eugene tries to teach Max how to draw in a similarly detailed manner the way he does. He lends him the book that taught him how to draw, but that doesn’t help. Max tries to draw the classic fruit-in-bowl object, but only ends up making a giant robot that’s intent on squishing the helpless fruit that’s held captive in the bowl.

The two boys decide that they’ll go further in their art journey if they team up. Max discovers that he can easily trace Eugene’s art, but that it’s just a duplicate and doesn’t pop with the snap of Max’s other drawings. Once they combine their styles they’re able to see a beautiful, chaotic story that’s worthy of their talents. It’s a detailed, lush forest, with crayon dinosaurs being ridden by two friends as they see George Washington’s torso walking around with robot arms.

Any excuse to remember Battle Bunny is a great time to recall that under-appreciated book. That book had an intentionally boring rabbit story that was scribbled over by a kid who found it to be too slow and laborious to read, much less be enjoyed. However, the new creation was a hoot and still remains one of our favorite children’s books from the past 10 years.

By the end of I Can’t Draw Max realizes that he can draw, it’s just in a different style than Eugene. His confidence has increased dramatically and Eugene has discovered that his art, that’s more realistic in style, can be enjoyed by a different audience when he collaborates with others.

Yeah, but lesson smession, kid don’t want to read or have something read to them that isn’t any fun. I Can’t Draw is so much fun that it’s got some to share with other books that aren’t as well crafted. It’s such a fun, silly book that early through middle-elementary school kids will want to have this book read to them, but they’ll also sneak away and spend some alone time with it. It’s that mythical alone time where kids will learn to master reading and plant those seeds that’ll germinate into intelligence. They’ll try to draw the illustrations that they see in the book, they’ll augment their drawings to where they create teacher with lobster legs and so forth.

Some young readers will draw parallels between Max and Eugene, and Kevin and Harold from Captain Underpants. They both do have a madcap sense of fun, as well as an affinity for a cleverly placed fart joke, but that’s where the comparison ends. The story in I can’t Draw, in this incarnation, is lovingly meant to be a one-off about two friends who are better than the sum of their parts when combined. However, if the same degree of quality, charm and brevity were placed in a different book, say, I can’t Dance, then a fabulous series of books would be born. It would also reintroduce people to that semi-classic song from Genesis, which does have a nice hook to it.

I Can’t Draw is by Stephen W. Martin with illustrations by Brian Biggs and is available on Margaret K. McElderry Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

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