Childhood and drawing seem to go hand in hand. It’s hard to imagine a time before visual arts of any kind, but cave drawings show that there must have been a time in human existence when this was a new activity. In a gorgeous new picture book, Mordicai Gerstein spins a tale of how The First Drawing came to be made. According to the Author’s Note at the end of the book, this story was inspired by the discovery of what are believed to be the world’s oldest cave drawings, made more than thirty thousand years ago, and the finding of a human footprint of a young child nearby.
As the book opens, the reader is encouraged to imagine that he lived in a cave with a sizable number of relatives more than thirty thousand years ago, and the world as it existed then is described. (The reader becomes the young boy from long ago, and the narrator addresses him as “you” throughout the story, a cool way to pull children into the book!) The young boy is curious about his world, as all children in all times are, and he sees images in the clouds, in the fire flames, in the shape of a stone. When he excitedly points out these pictures, the others in his clan shush him for they cannot see what he sees. In fact, they begin to call him “Child Who Sees What Isn’t There.”
One night, after a very close-up encounter with a wooly mammoth, the boy becomes determined to make the others see the picture he sees in the shadows on the cave wall. He picks up a burnt stick from the edge of the fire and he brings the picture to life on the cave wall, as shown in the cover image. At first, his family members are shocked by the image and think that magic has created an actual mammoth in their home, but soon the boy gets them to understand the concept of drawing and they all join in.
Who knows, perhaps this story isn’t far off from how the first cave drawings came to be! Gerstein acknowledges that there is a bit of magic in play when people draw, something that young children can understand well for drawing is often their first way of communicating their own creative ideas and stories. The illustrations are rendered in acrylics, pen and ink, and as usual, Gerstein’s work is visually stunning, using a sketchy style that conveys texture so well. I’m a big fan of Gerstein’s The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, a 2003 picture book that portrays Philippe Petit’s 1974 tight rope walk between Manhattan’s World Trade Center towers, and once again I’m blown away by his unique voice in children’s literature.
The First Drawing is a beautiful book that encourages children to imagine a long ago world before the familiar act of drawing existed, and I highly recommend it for any child who loves to create their own art.