Picture This

Starred review from November 22, 2010
Barry's follow-up to her critically and popularly acclaimed What It Is focuses on the practice and purpose of drawing. As before, this oversized, full-color book collages comics, drawings, and found images to blend memoir, fiction, and philosophy with workbook-style instruction. Picture This proceeds from the same ideas in Barry's earlier work—which regard creative activity as a necessary extension of childhood play—but may be neater in its marriage of theory and practice. By focusing on drawing as directly as the first book did on writing, this ornately visual book shows the fruits of Barry's practice on every page even as it makes her methods overtly accessible. The book is interspersed with comics narratives including moving autobiographical shorts and sequences featuring her beloved characters Marlys, Maybonne, and Arna, as well as full-page images of her new character: a self-satisfied avatar called "The Nearsighted Monkey," who represents, perhaps, a well-fed creative impulse. A pedagogical sketchbook by a wise and eccentric kindergarten teacher for adults—who is also a fully mature artist—Picture This teaches, nurtures, and encourages without sacrificing the edge that makes art a thrilling journey into the unknown.

Starred review from December 1, 2012

Many librarians have found themselves at a loss how properly to catalog these companion volumes by renowned comic artist and author Barry. They are ultimately part memoir, part creative workbook, part comic, and part tragic, and while many kids and teens may enjoy them, much of the subject matter is quite mature. Each book deals with drawing pictures and telling stories in varying proportions, and both examine from many angles the notion of keeping visual journals. Barry has said that her goal is to inspire readers, and she succeeds.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2011

Gr 9 Up-Teens who enjoyed Barry's What It Is (Drawn & Quarterly, 2008) will find more to love in this follow-up. While more reflective than its predecessor, it maintains the earlier work's hybrid formula; it is both a work of art and a work about art, being part picture book, part creative therapy, part step-by-step instruction, and part comic memoir. In one memorable panel, Barry compares an image of a happily scribbling three-year-old to that of a teen who stares sullenly at a blank page. The author asks, "What makes us start drawing? What makes us stop?" To work toward the answers to these questions, she demonstrates how anyone can express who they are through the creation of images, even if those images are nothing more than chickens made of cotton balls. She also elaborates on the power of image-making and how it has supported her throughout her life. Longtime Barry fans will be happy to see the return of Marlys, the outspoken, guileless tween who is arguably her best-known character. Barry herself also appears in the guise of a new doppelganger, The Near-Sighted Monkey. While the book's unusual nature and indirect messaging will no doubt confuse many, for the right person, Picture This could be a launching pad to a new level of creativity and self-exploration.-Douglas P. Davey, Halton Hills Public Library, Ontario, Canada

Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2011
The creator of the weekly Ernie Pooks Comeek follows up What It Is (2008) with this equally inspiring and inspired guide to freeing the creative potential within even the most tightly buttoned reader. Barry introduces the Near-Sighted Monkey, who joins her beloved character Marlys in leading readers through imagination-loosening exercises in doodling and coloring as well as snippets of sly storytelling and fact revealing. At times the Near-Sighted Monkey channels Barrypresenting information about how the cartoonist approaches her own workand also offers very monkey-centric tidbits, such as when to talk about banana peels. Marlys fans will find plenty of satisfaction here, but adults and older teens who crave the opportunity to regain the pleasures they found in childhood creativity will also be thrilled with this volume. Although this book makes a good companion for What It Is, there is no need to be familiar with that title before cracking this one.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)