Every animal in this book is six steps. Two circles, then a shape, then a shape, then a face, then the finished creature, each stage numbered in its own box and drawn big enough to follow from the other side of the table. A child who cannot draw a dog on Monday can draw a dog on Monday.

Alli Koch is a professional artist and muralist, and she opens with the two spreads that make the rest work. TOOLS says a pencil and any paper will do and points out that a good eraser is part of drawing, not an admission of failure. BREAK IT DOWN shows the trick the whole book runs on: every animal here is a bundle of circles, ovals and C shaped and S shaped lines, and once you see them you can see them everywhere.

Then it is animal after animal from the farm, the forest, the jungle and the sea. The book counts fifty six of them on its own BREAK IT DOWN page, which is photographed here; the publisher’s sales card says more than forty. A fun fact sits above each one, which is the detail that keeps a seven year old turning pages: a frog can be hypnotized by rubbing its stomach, koalas have fingerprints like ours, llamas spit when they are annoyed, butterflies taste with their feet. The pages photographed here are the frog, the koala, the llama, the butterfly and a giraffe.

The binding lies flat so nobody has to hold the book open with an elbow, the paper is thick, and every page is perforated, so a drawing worth keeping comes out in one piece and goes on the refrigerator.

Paperback with lay flat binding, 80 pages, 9 by 9 in. Paige Tate & Co., 3 August 2021. ISBN-13 9781950968237.

Get the companion, All the Things Draw woodland creatures next Color Alli Koch's flowers in Bloom