Chapter 1
Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest.
It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal.
Here is a copy of the drawing.
In the book it said: "Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it.
After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the six months that they need for digestion."
I pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle.
And after some work with a colored pencil I succeeded in making my first drawing.
My Drawing Number One. It looked something like this:
I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing frightened them.