This work traces the development of the human figure in children's drawings, showing how children add to and alter their figures as they get older and more skilful. It discusses why children's drawings often seem so bizarre to adults, revealing what these figures tell as about the child's intelligence or emotional stability.

The human figure is one of the earliest topics drawn by the young child and remains popular throughout childhood and into adolescence. When it first emerges, however, the human figure in the child's drawing is very bizarre: it appears to have no torso and its arms, if indeed it has any, are attached to its head. Even when the figure begins to look more conventional the child must still contend with a variety of problems: for instance, how to draw the head and body in the right proportions and how to draw the figure in action.
In this book, Maureen Cox traces the development of the human...