Everyone Can Draw

This hardback picturebook is a pleasure to read and share, as well as being an open invitation to ‘get drawing’. The text is minimal but carefully considered and introduces basic ideas about the choices we all make when creating art. We can draw characters or scenes, which can be black and white or brightly coloured. We can use scissors to cut collages, our fingers to make prints or a needle and thread for embroidery, and we can make our pictures anywhere. What will You draw? asks the final spread.
Brightly-coloured artwork shows children from different ethnic backgrounds playing across each spread, and wondering who these children are and what they could be saying is part of the fun of exploring the book. Child-style drawings jostle for space alongside other artwork including pencil sketches, ink drawings, collage, fingerpainting and embroidery. This diversity helps fuel inspiration and ideas and underlining this, the endpapers feature drawings showcasing different media – felt tips, coloured pencils, Chinese ink, collage and sewing – offering an unspoken invitation for children to match them to the artwork. 
There’s a straightforward and enjoyable message here, but opportunities to develop it and engage children in something deeper may have been missed and adult readers may feel that this book doesn’t quite deliver on its initial promise. But there is always room for titles that send positive messages and encourage children to express themselves creatively, and Everyone Can Draw will be a welcome addition to libraries, classrooms and other settings. 
Fifi Kuo is a new young author-illustrator whose picturebook, I Can Fly,has been shortlisted for this year’s Klaus Flugge Prize.