My wife and I often sing The Kinks’ song “Picture Book.” It features the line, “Picture book, pictures of your mama, taken by your papa a long time ago.” Picture books for children feature drawings, though, and so I had both this song and children’s books on my mind as a result of a project my wife worked on with my daughter.
Yesterday while I was at school teaching, my wife and daughter started making two picture books. One contained memories of my daughter’s preschool. The other contained features of our neighborhood. I was blown away by both of them.
The preschool book is finished. It has sixteen pages, each with a picture my daughter drew recording something she remembered from her two plus years at the school. My wife helped only in prompting the ideas for various pictures. All the drawings were my daughters. They included:
- My daughter and her best friend
- The playground
- The headmaster
- Three of my daughter’s other friends
- A stage with performers from one of her Christmas programs
- My daughter in her leopard costume from last Halloween
- A picture of two kids looking at an airplane (apparently, planes flying to and from Greenville’s airport frequently flew over the school)
- A picture of her soccer coach and two kids kicking a soccer ball
- A picture of three kids at a lunch table
(She’s started doing this thing with characters’ eyes where she signifies someone’s happiness with these symbols: “^ ^”. If they are winking, they get “^ ~” for their eyes. I love it.)
She’s not done with the neighborhood book yet, but it features some keepers too.
I don’t know if she understands what a cool memory book this is. My wife was prompted to do the project with her because they are doing something similar at school this week while my daughter is quarantined with COVID exposure. I have little doubt that she would have done a better job with the project had she been at school.
My daughter draws A LOT. Many of her drawings are sketches and are consequently scrappable. If my daughter doesn’t want to keep these picture books, however, I will.
Learning Together 