Children's drawings...

"Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called

True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest. It was a picture of a boa

constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal. Here is a copy of the drawing.

In the book it said: “Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without

chewing it. After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the

six months that they need for digestion.”

I pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle. And after some

work with a colored pencil I succeeded in making my first drawing. My Drawing

Number One. It looked like this:

I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the

drawing frightened them.

But they answered: “Frighten? Why should any one be frightened by a

hat?”

My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor

digesting an elephant. But since the grown-ups were not able to understand it,

I made another drawing: I drew the inside of the boa constrictor, so that the

grown-ups could see it clearly. They always need to have things explained. My

Drawing Number Two looked like this:

"