Art history with a little smile.
Following up If Picasso Painted a Snowman (2017), introductions to 19 more painters and their best-known styles.
In line with the previous gallery, the Newbolds dispatch a shiny-eyed hamster docent to squire young viewers past a set of full-page or larger scenes that imitate famous, or at least representative, paintings—with prehistoric elements, mostly dinosaurs, in each. The virtual museum tour begins with a Vitruvian Microraptor à la Leonardo and ends with a finely rendered Dino Lisa (a gowned maiasaura, according to the key at the end, but looking more than a little like Jar Jar Binks). In between he dishes up Dégas-style ballet dancers, plesiosaurs surfing a version of Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa, a can of Andy Warhol’s Dino Noodle Soup, Mark Rothko color fields declared to represent layers of prehistoric rocks, and more. Other artists include Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Qi Baishi, Loïs Mailou Jones, Harrison Begay, and Marguerite Zorach. The accompanying captions incline toward wordplay: “Cassius Coolidge crates a Cretaceous card game”; “BOOM! CRASH! CRUNK! Here comes a dinosaur by Edvard Munch!” Like the art, some dinos are actual ones, others fanciful. Leonardo is an outlier in this 18th- to 20th-century company (Begay alone lived into the 21st), but the lineup is at least as varied in school or style as the previous one and more diverse of sex, race, and national background than both its predecessor and many others of its ilk. Would-be Leonardos will find both an invitingly blank page to fill at the end and elementary prompts from the versatile illustrator.
Art history with a little smile. (thumbnail biographies) (Informational picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-88448-667-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Tilbury House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses.
An NBA star pays tribute to the influence of his grandfather.
In the same vein as his Long Shot (2009), illustrated by Frank Morrison, this latest from Paul prioritizes values and character: “My granddad Papa Chilly had dreams that came true,” he writes, “so maybe if I listen and watch him, / mine will too.” So it is that the wide-eyed Black child in the simply drawn illustrations rises early to get to the playground hoops before anyone else, watches his elder working hard and respecting others, hears him cheering along with the rest of the family from the stands during games, and recalls in a prose afterword that his grandfather wasn’t one to lecture but taught by example. Paul mentions in both the text and the backmatter that Papa Chilly was the first African American to own a service station in North Carolina (his presumed dream) but not that he was killed in a robbery, which has the effect of keeping the overall tone positive and the instructional content one-dimensional. Figures in the pictures are mostly dark-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-250-81003-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
A picture book more than worthy of sharing the shelf with Alan Schroeder and Jerry Pinkney’s Minty (1996) and Carole Boston...
A memorable, lyrical reverse-chronological walk through the life of an American icon.
In free verse, Cline-Ransome narrates the life of Harriet Tubman, starting and ending with a train ride Tubman takes as an old woman. “But before wrinkles formed / and her eyes failed,” Tubman could walk tirelessly under a starlit sky. Cline-Ransome then describes the array of roles Tubman played throughout her life, including suffragist, abolitionist, Union spy, and conductor on the Underground Railroad. By framing the story around a literal train ride, the Ransomes juxtapose the privilege of traveling by rail against Harriet’s earlier modes of travel, when she repeatedly ran for her life. Racism still abounds, however, for she rides in a segregated train. While the text introduces readers to the details of Tubman’s life, Ransome’s use of watercolor—such a striking departure from his oil illustrations in many of his other picture books—reveals Tubman’s humanity, determination, drive, and hope. Ransome’s lavishly detailed and expansive double-page spreads situate young readers in each time and place as the text takes them further into the past.
A picture book more than worthy of sharing the shelf with Alan Schroeder and Jerry Pinkney’s Minty (1996) and Carole Boston Weatherford and Kadir Nelson’s Moses (2006). (Picture book/biography. 5-8)Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2047-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
