I was standing around in a co-worker's cubicle at my old job one day, and noticed that she had poorly drawn pictures hanging in her cubicle. So I told her they sucked. She took offense and brought to my attention that it was drawn by her 4-year-old nephew. It changed nothing. In fact, it only strengthened my resolve to grade children's artwork, because I don't think kids should get a free pass for being kids. Coddling children ruins them. Mozart wasn't coddled, and look at him: dead and famous. Most people will only ever accomplish being dead in life. Mozart accomplished two things.

Back in 2002, my website was getting around 2000 visitors per day, when I suddenly got a call from the "Don & Mike" radio show out of WJFK in Virginia. They asked me to read an original article of mine on the air, so I wrote about grading children's artwork based on my experience with my co-worker. The article went viral shortly thereafter, my website got millions of hits almost overnight, and the traffic has continued since. Here are the original articles as they were published in 2002:

The articles today have been read tens of millions of times, and have been sent everywhere. There are some lame imitators out there, but I'm the one who wrote the original. I've been telling you why your kids art sucks for over a decade.

People have been asking me for years to write more children's artwork, and now I'm finally able to write the book I've wanted to write since I posted the original articles in 2002. Stay tuned to this site, or join the Facebook group for more info:

I'll continue to post updates about the book, the release date (when it becomes finalized), tour schedule, and how to obtain review copies.

Update (11/01/11):

The book is officially released! Here is the buy link and the book tour information.