Jesse and I came across a book the other day called DROODLES, a collection -- the "Classic Collection" according to the subtitle of the book -- of those sort of Zen squiggles, that, if you are looking at them the "right" way, suggest a hidden depth of meaning. You will remember the classic "Boy Scout on a bicycle... top view" and "Giraffe passing a second storey window..." pictured below. (Neither of which, curiously enough made it into Roger Price's collection.) Some of the "droodles" in the book are definitely classics (i.e. I remember drawing them when I was a child), but some are either ones I missed or ones that Roger Price made up.

Classic or new, though, they're a lot of fun.

The book was published in this edition in 2000 by Tallfellow Press. (There are copyright notices going back to 1953, so maybe Price was, in fact, the author of some of those droodles that I remember from my childhood.) It sells for $13.95 Canadian.

Of course, I had to try my hand at making up some of my own droodles...

The link below will take you to my first collection...

Since Roger Price has dibs on the name "droodles", I had to come up with my own name, and I decided on "alloodles" because each of the doodles "alludes" to something... When I went to my MERRIAM WEBSTER'S COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY - TENTH EDITION to check on the spelling of the word "allude", I discovered that the word "alloodles" is particularly apt. The definition for the word allude reads:
allude vi [L alludere., lit., to play with. fr. ad +ludere to play -- more at LUDICROUS] (1533): to make indirect reference; broadly: REFER

When you go to my ALLOODLES collection, simply click on one of the doodles to find out what I think it alludes to...

ALLOODLES - TEXT AND ILLUSTRATIONS

© 2001 by Richard Thompson