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MARY CASSATT

Name: MARY CASSATT
Author: Tom Streissguth
ISBN: 1-57505-291-1

PORTRAIT OF AN AMERICAN IMPRESSIONIST

by Tom Streissguth ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 6, 1999

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This informative biography of a pioneering American artist is also an interesting look at the insular world of art at that time, particularly in France, where the Paris Salon for years had been the arbiter of what was and wasn’t art, and, by extension, who among the artists succeeded and who failed. A few artists began an art movement of their own, showing their work in homes and galleries to an increasingly interested public. Streissguth explains how these Independents, as they called themselves, refused to paint gods, goddesses, and other subjects of the classical traditions; instead they created works that did not depend on photographic realism to make their point, but instead gave an impression of a scene or a person. Cassatt, an American, felt a kinship with these painters, and was invited to exhibit her work with them. That she was an exceptional artist and woman emerges in the early pages; the author provides a thorough, engrossing context for the details of her life, while the reproductions of many of her works reinforce her brilliance. (bibliography, index) (Biography. 10-13)

Pub Date: April 6, 1999

ISBN: 1-57505-291-1

Page Count: 112

Publisher: Carolrhoda

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1999

Categories:

CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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ALL BY HERSELF

POEMS

by Ann Whitford Paul ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1999

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Prose poems celebrate the feats of young heroines, some of them famous, and some not as well-known. Paul (Hello Toes! Hello Feet!, 1998, etc.) recounts moments in the lives of women such as Rachel Carson, Amelia Earhart, and Wilma Rudolph; these moments don’t necessarily reflect what made them famous as much as they are pivotal events in their youth that influenced the direction of their lives. For Earhart, it was sliding down the roof of the tool shed in a home-made roller coaster: “It’s like flying!” For Rudolph, it was the struggle to learn to walk without her foot brace. Other women, such as Violet Sheehy, who rescued her family from a fire in Hinckley, Minnesota, or Harriet Hanson, a union supporter in the fabric mills of Massachusetts, are celebrated for their brave decisions made under extreme duress. Steirnagle’s sweeping paintings powerfully exude the strength of character exhibited by these young women. A commemorative book, that honors both quiet and noisy acts of heroism. (Picture book/poetry. 6-9)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-15-201477-2

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999

Categories:

CHILDREN'S POETRY | CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
IF ANIMALS TRICK-OR-TREATED
by Ann Whitford Paul ; illustrated by David Walker

- BOOK REVIEW
WHO LOVES LITTLE LEMUR?
by Ann Whitford Paul ; illustrated by Jay Fleck

- BOOK REVIEW
IF ANIMALS GAVE THANKS
by Ann Whitford Paul ; illustrated by David Walker

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IF A BUS COULD TALK

THE STORY OF ROSA PARKS

by Faith Ringgold ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1999

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Ringgold’s biography of Rosa Parks packs substantial material into a few pages, but with a light touch, and with the ring of authenticity that gives her act of weary resistance all the respect it deserves. Narrating the book is the bus that Parks took that morning 45 years ago; it recounts the signal events in Parks’s life to a young girl who boarded it to go to school. A decent amount of the material will probably be new to children, for Parks is so intimately associated with the Montgomery Bus Boycott that her work with the NAACP before the bus incident is often overlooked, as is her later role as a community activist in Detroit with Congressman John Conyers. Ringgold, through the bus, also informs readers of Parks’s youth in rural Alabama, where Klansmen and nightriders struck fear into the lives of African-Americans. These experiences make her refusal to release her seat all the more courageous, for the consequences of resistance were not gentle. All the events are depicted in emotive naive artwork that underscores their truth; Ringgold delivers Parks’s story without hyperbole, but rather as a life lived with pride, conviction, and consequence. (Picture book/biography. 5-9)