I recommend this work to anyone interested in Africa - quite possibly the best you can get without going to Botswana.

Always I like being around when children draw. So authors Anthony I Geist and Peter N Carroll get my attention right away when they say that children's art tells us what children go through and see. The examples in THEY STILL DRAW PICTURES show what children zero in on from going through war, from the Spanish civil war of the 1930s, to the Holocaust of the 1930s-1940s, to the Kosovo bloodbath of the 1990s.

All too often what affects children becomes common knowledge, only by way of adults drawing, talking and writing. Yet respected artist, biographer, historian and psychoanalyst Erik H Erikson says that how children feel and think is there for anyone to see in their art. Just look at what the body parts and faces are doing, what colors are used, what things fill up the spaces.

An especially chilling example are children's drawings of German bombers destroying the Spanish Basque city of Guernica. Experts know the exact models being flown, just from children's drawings!

In fact, children's wartime art always tells the same story in the same way. First there's life before the war, such as at a grandmother's house or with a family dog savoring a bone. Next come the war scenes, such as of a soldier whipping a man lashed to a tree. Then there's evacuation, such as of a roadside full of tiny stick figures. And then there's the life in refugee camps, such as of the children playing outside a building while smoke billows from the chimney or of the colony dining room. Finally there's life after the war, such as of a 10-year old girl sitting in the grass, with open book in hand.

The book is clearly organized and interestingly written. It reads well with Ismail Kadare's CHRONICLE IN STONE. It shows well with two videos, JEUX INTERDITS and HOPE AND GLORY.

This is a quite comprehensive book. The authors cover a wide variety of insightful information and research in the child welfare field. Very good for anybody who will be working in a public child welfare setting or conducting research in this area. As with most academic reading, it tends to be a little dry. And, because there is so much information, sometimes it doesn't flow very well.