Last month, we invited Brendan Wenzel, author and illustrator of the award-winning picture book, They All Saw a Cat, to have a virtual storytelling event with students at Storyland.
The 13-hour time difference between Shanghai and New York meant that students at Storyland needed to get to the centre in the late evening whereas Brendan had to be up early in the morning. But that certainly did not discourage either party from showing up.
During the event, Brendan read the much beloved book They All Saw a Cat to the kids and invited them to draw with him.
Have a look at some of the amazing drawings created by the kids:
On the night, one of the students was feeling very self-conscious about her drawing. She was worried that her drawing wasn’t good enough because she only used pencil and didn’t add in any colour.
Upon looking at the girl’s drawing carefully, Brendan said to her,
“I know that you didn’t use color and maybe you’re worried about that, but just remember that there’s no wrong way to do a picture. Anyway that you see the world, any way that you imagine a world, that’s gonna show people around you something that they’ve never ever seen before.
So even though you think, well, I don’t want to use color, why is everyone using color? That’s fantastic. That’s how you want to make a picture. And that’s a great way that’s something brand new that I didn’t see this morning. So it’s really, really fantastic, please don’t worry about that.”
In our interview with Brendan Wenzel, he also talks about how there’s no wrong way to do a picture and that everyone can share their unique perspective through the act of drawing.
Listen to our interview with Brendan Wenzel by clicking on the image below.
Storyland 