How to Draw a Chicken

The cover of this humorous small-format drawing guide suggests that its original title was How to Draw Animals. However, the word “animals” has been crossed out and replaced with “a chicken,” a downgrade that reflects just how much trouble the chickens in the book give French illustrator Sénac. Instructions on chicken-drawing are handwritten in cursive on blank white pages, with black line drawings taking shape below. Things begin well (“draw a triangle”) but quickly go south when Sénac draws a pair of legs attached to a beak. “What about the body?” asks the malformed chicken, who runs away before Sénac can add one. The artist fares better on his second attempt (though that bird never gets a beak or feet), and his frustrated interactions with the drawings are quite funny, though the story devolves when another bird wanders onto the scene, a baby chick appears to manifest from an egg’s dream, cockerels are attempted, and a bird spontaneously deflates. Even Sénac can’t quite figure out how to wrap it up, opting for a “well, I’ve got to go but please carry on.” Ages 5–up. (Oct.)