HOW TO DRAW A ZOMBIE

Abbott and Wagner take a decidedly different approach to teaching young people to draw.

“So you want to learn how to draw a zombie, huh? *Sigh.* Well, it’s really not that hard…” Our unseen narrator has lots of drawing advice to go along with this attitude. Regarding the pupils in a zombie’s eyes: “Make them askew and oddly shaped. Like this.” Abbott and Wagner furnish examples of two different-size eyeballs, under which is written “YES! YES!”; on the facing page, we see two same-size eyes over the words “NO NO!” The narrator’s strong opinions and hilariously unconventional suggestions continue (“Instead of putting the hair on the head, you could put the hair on the teeth”), and before long, readers who follow these instructions will have made what looks like a comically unrefined drawing of a zombie. The book’s message seems to be to eschew perfectionism, but it could also be that one should follow one’s own artistic vision rather than obediently following an instructor’s. Abbott and Wagner use ink, pencil, and construction paper (there are intermittent highlighter-bright color backdrops and accents) to illustrate the book, which concludes with a zombie driving a fancy car (its arm having flown off).

A riotous think-outside-the-box lesson disguised as a how-to-draw book.