#188 of 1001 · February 4, 2021

What a tour de force is The Book of Mistakes by @corinnaluyken. An unseen artist sketches a girl (beginning with the face and then adding a body and clothing) and then draws other characters and details of the surrounding environment. Each successive page of the book provides a snapshot of the work in progress. Several times, the fictional artist makes a mistake—that is, puts an unintentional mark to the paper or inaccurately renders an anatomical feature. However, each seeming error inspires an inventive solution or modification: stray smudges transform into leaves, an obtrusive splotch becomes a hat. Has Luyken extracted the elegant form of her story from its intriguing content? Or perhaps the other way around? It’s difficult to adduce directionality in such an original and well-balanced pairing. Through her restricted color palette (isolated patches of soft green, warm yellow, and pale pink on an ink-black line art landscape), she visually foregrounds the cyclical process of creation and revision. Her pensive and philosophically rich text cleverly directs the reader’s focus to the emerging art rather than to the identity of the artist. In the book’s final pages, however, the perspective begins to pull back—gradually at first, and then by orders of magnitude. Finally, the world of the drawing is revealed as part of a larger whole, and an astonishingly profound metafictional dimension emerges. Here is a lyrical study of the vital link between creator and creation and of the compelling search for joy in the unexpected. #mistake #mistakes #draw #drawing #art #artist #change #book #books #childrensbooks #beautifulbooks #picturebook #picturebooks #picturebookillustration #picturebookillustrations #picturebookart #childrensbookillustration #childrensliterature #illustration #kidlit #kidsbooks #bookworm #booklover #booklovers #bibliophile #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookstagrammers #instabook #instabooks