A rusty haze falls over the city, and young Jackie feels compelled to pull out her sketchbook. While people are forced to stay inside, she takes to drawing all her favourite sights, from sunlight against a tree to a squirrel’s furry tail to the mountain keeping watch over her city. 

But soon days turn to weeks, then to months, and Jackie begins to lose her will to draw at all. Only when she looks out the window one day and spies dolphins in the canal below, moose on the grass, and an eagle in the sky is she drawn back to her sketchbook, creating a dragon inspired by her newfound friends and climbing on its back to embark on an adventure over the changed landscape. 

This poetic and exquisitely drawn story is a reimagining of the pandemic lockdown, depicting all the possibilities of a world free from human intervention. Andrew Katz handles this heavy material with a light touch, weaving a tale full of imagination and possibility. The story is accompanied by Tony Luzano’s compelling illustrations of a city undergoing profound change and brought to new life by a child’s imagination. 

Jackie’s Drawing includes discussion points about the resilience of nature and the chimera-like creature that emerges from Jackie’s sketchbook. Young readers are invited to come up with a chimera of their own – an opportunity to invent new ways of seeing, and perhaps even changing, the world outside their own windows. mRb