I don’t remember much from my hospital stays as a four-year-old, except the intense longing to leave. As a child, it’s hard to understand why you’re confined to one suffocating room—you just know something isn’t right. It was times like these that ignited my love for art. Drawing became a way to pass the time, an escape. I never saw representation in children’s books for struggles like this, so I decided to create my own. Using graphite pencils, I tell the story of a girl named Clara who is stuck in the hospital. After wandering the halls, she finds paints and creates a beautiful landscape on the wall. To her surprise, her work is not just any mural, but a portal that takes her to paradise! As the pages progress, I implement more color using gouache to demonstrate how art brightens up Clara’s life, just as it does mine. The story promotes art as an outlet for pent-up frustrations, while instilling hope in pediatric patients that they will make it to a better, brighter place.
Want to read it yourself?
