The return of Book Looking!
Looking at "Drawing Is...Your Guide to Scribbled Adventures" by Elizabeth Haidle
I’m back! It’s been three years since I started Book Looking and since then, I’ve looked at A LOT of books! Like Drawing Is…Your Guide to Scribbled Adventures by Elizabeth Haidle.
Each page has a sentiment, expression, or suggestion that made me think of someone in my life. I could barely focus on reading it because I kept wanting to text those people and tell them about it! (I think it’s because this book could appeal to people—adults and kids— who are already great at drawing and to people who think they can’t draw at all.)
And when I wasn’t struggling to stay focused, I was wrapped into the friendly tone it’s written in and of course, her illustrations.
I even felt excited to sharpen a colored pencil and draw because of this:
I like when a book compels me to drop everything and try something that I normally don’t do, like it’s renewing a lease on life that I let lapse. Even though I use pens and paper every day to take notes and make lists, I don’t regularly doodle. But that recipe of hers distilled drawing into something effortless and made me want to zone out and draw dots. And then lines. For fun.
The book came out in early May and I must not have been feeling like myself that day because I didn’t go to all my online bookseller links to order it. Instead, I decided to let it come into my life organically. Which it did two days ago when I visited Mother Foucault’s Bookshop in its new location! I was there with my friend JJ to talk with the owner (Craig) about hosting a writing workshop for Some People Press. While we were looking around, we ran into Elizabeth! (A few minutes before, I spied a copy of the book on a stack near the tea-drinking table and felt happy/sad when I opened it and saw that it was inscribed to the bookshop owner’s daughter; happy for her, sad for me because it wasn’t for sale.)
Elizabeth showed us her studio on the second floor AND the sweet letter-writing nook she set up outside her door. That’s when I asked her if I could buy the book straight from her and the rest is the history which you just read!
I’ve known her since 2018 as documented in our Instagram convo:
But I have not seen her since 2022 when she drew me giving a Creative Mornings talk a few months before she gave hers. (I briefly saw her in 2023 but we only got to talk for a very few minutes.)
I saved her “desk scene” endpapers for the end because they were the first and last delights, bookending my inspiring experience of looking at Drawing Is….
