(NB: I wrote this essay more than two weeks after the events herein described took place, to ensure that no one in my pod contracted Covid-19 in pursuit of this story. Thankfully, no one did!)
Once upon a time, when Free Comic Book Day was rescheduled to August 2021, I visited my local comics retailer (First Aid Comics in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago) and nabbed a handful of the cutest, most child-friendly-looking comics that I could find.
One of the items that made the grab was an excerpt from Chad Sell’s Doodleville, coincidentally set in Chicago and featuring scenes of kids visiting the Art Institute of Chicago. During their visit, artistic shenanigans ensue.
The children in my household were riveted by the truncated tale. To appease them, as well as my own curiosity, I ordered the full 320-page graphic novel from First Aid Comics.
We read Doodleville approximately six million times (a conservative estimate) over the course of a weekend. The story is fast-paced and fun, featuring an art club of young kids, teamwork, collaboration, and various artistic styles (enabled by showcasing the range of work of the art club as well as the range of content in the Art Institute of Chicago). There is a “bad guy,” but it all works out in the end, and the content was well-received by the small humans I am endeavoring to entertain and keep alive during worldwide pandemania.
In the story, the main character draws a very large home for her doodle characters, called Doodleville, natch. In my house, we have that huge $3.99 roll of IKEA paper that everyone buys and then uses as wrapping paper (without having the kids decorate it with a rainbow of handprints first because Pinterest can only take you so far in life and paint makes such a mess (or am I projecting?)). In any case, the paper was perfect for drawing our own doodled villages, complete with doodled characters to live there.
We listened to an interview with Chad Sell and then poked around on his website, where we found print-outs of the doodles from the story. We printed them on cardstock, colored them in, cut them out, and glued them to wooden popsicle sticks.
Then, after checking to see that the Art Institute of Chicago typically had low attendance on Mondays during “members only” hour, 10-11 am, we took our face masks, proof of vaccination, and Doodleville puppets to find the paintings featured in the graphic novel, posed the puppets with the paintings, and regaled the security guards with tales of our antics. Some of the exhibits were being renovated, but we managed to see a ballerina statue by Edward Degas, water lilies by Claude Monet, and Van Gough’s famous room before the children needed to leave for a snack at Stan’s Donuts (which is also featured in the book!).
This delightful exchanged happened in Real Life:
“Ma’am, what are you doing to that painting?”
“Oh, we are on a homeschool field trip! Let me show you this neat graphic novel!”
“Wow, cool! I never heard of it before! I’m going to order it from the comic book shop across the street!”
When we got home, I messaged Chad Sell on Instagram to thank him for a delightful three-hour homeschooling adventure and share photos from our participation in the #DoodleWorldTour. In perhaps the most exciting turn of events, he replied to the children and complimented them on their artwork. He mentioned that it had been challenging (!) to release a book in 2020, hence the idea for the #DoodleWorldTour.
In any case, by that point it was 11 am on a Monday in January 2022 and I decided to retire from homeschooling for the year, because there’s no way we are going to top this adventure in literacy, art history, field tripping, and fan mailing.
Although, we might have to look into The Cardboard Kingdom and accompanying cardboard crafting next…
I hope this gives you some ideas for activities if you are also trapped in a house with small people (or if you just have some big paper laying around). Happy doodling!
