about the book
A young boy is seen lying on his bed in his room, asthma inhaler near at hand. He is lost in a book about Africa. How cool would it be to go there?
The boy’s sketchpad is on the floor. His imagination takes off. In his mind he can travel anywhere, and with his sketchpad he can visualize it all. He starts with small, full-color panels, depicting himself treking across the African veldt. The boy encounters rhinoceroses and monkeys, his drawings get more and more complex, and soon he is fully lost in the fantasy.
An elephant lets the boy draw its portrait, then gives him rides to other exotic animals who want their pictures drawn—giraffes, zebras, hippos. A rhinoceros portrait almost ends in disaster. When he meets some baboons, they draw him instead!
The adventure must end, but not before new friends are made, and the boy realizes that even though he sometimes is bedridden by sickness, his imagination is unfettered!
about the author
Raúl Colón was born in New York City in the winter of 1952. As a child he was chronically ill with asthma, frequently not able to leave the house, sometimes for days or even weeks. In that time he couldn’t play outside with the other kids, but he could draw and paint inside, filling dozens of notebooks with his work. Sometimes he even tried to make his own comic books!
In the 1960s Raúl and his parents moved to Caguas, Puerto Rico. There he began studying commercial art, and by 1978 he had moved back to the United States, to Florida, designing puppets and animated shorts for an educational television show.
In 1988 Raúl, now married, moved with his family back to New York and began his freelance career as an illustrator, which he has been doing ever since.
Source:
Author biography: NCCIL
Also by Raúl Colón :
Abuelo by Arthur Dorros. Harper Collins. 2014.
Look Up! : Henrietta Leavitt, Pioneering Woman Astronomer by Robert Burleigh. Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman. 2013.
Don’t Forget, God Bless Our Troops by Jill Biden. Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman. 2012.
Good-bye, Havana! Hola, New York! by Edie Colon. Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman. 2011.
Child of the Civil Rights Movement by Paula Young Shelton. Schwartz & Wade. 2009.
How to Bake an American Pie by Karma Wilson. Margaret K. McElderry Books. 2007.
Dona Flor : A Tall Tale about a Giant Woman with a Great Big Heart by Pat Mora. Alfred A. Knopf. 2005.
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