Book Description
for Draw What You See by Kathleen Benson and Benny Andrews
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
As a child, Benny Andrews drew “hot suns and red clay and little wood-frame houses that stretched as far as he could see. He drew Black people working in the fields.” When he grew up and moved to Chicago for art school, Andrews drew jazz artists in the clubs he visited, and janitors at the school he attended. After moving to New York City, he drew people in Harlem, “the happiness and sadness that he saw.” Throughout his career, his art was inspired by the people and scenes of his childhood and by those in his life in the present tense, including the burgeoning protests of the civil rights movement. A lovely, graceful picture book has a trim size suggestive of the elongated figures in Andrews’s paintings, which illustrate this admiring, informative narrative about the artist-activist that opens with a vignette describing his work with children displaced by Hurricane Katrina. An author’s note observes that Andrews work included “teaching both inside and outside the classroom.” (Ages 6–9)
CCBC Choices 2016. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2016. Used with permission.