THE CHILD'S CREATION OF A PICTORIAL WORLD, by Claire Golomb. Mahwah, New Jersey: Erlbaum, 2004, 388 pp.

Children's drawings fill us with wonder and delight. They may tend, however, to puzzle us, especially if we seek to comprehend them in terms appropriate to the drawings of mature artists or in terms relevant for other pictorial forms and expressions. Likewise, they may puzzle us if we make the mistake of supposing that they represent in any direct or obvious way the cognitive development of young children or if we see them only as comical, inept efforts at depicting external reality. Children's drawings stimulate many nagging questions, among them the one as to why it should be that a child who knows so much and who is verbally so articulate may be graphically capable of depicting so little.


Ellen Handler Spitz
Honors College Professor of Visual Arts,
University of Maryland, UMBC