This distinctive biography brims with artistic vision as it informs about a signature sculptor.
The simplest objects can turn into art when you draw from life, nature, and personal passion.
Fascinated by a snail’s shell, gossamer dragonfly wings, and a spider’s complex web, Ruth Asawa carefully observed tiny details around her family farm, her hands constantly busy with found objects such as wire and paper. Simple, straightforward text tells how she drew inspiration from Japanese calligraphy, dancers who bent their bodies into shapes, and craftsmen in Mexico who twisted wire baskets. With this last, Ruth had found her medium and her lifelong obsession. Her own wire structures became graceful, weightless works of art, looped structures that invited others to look closely and imagine what they see, providing inspiration to future young artists. Charcoal-and–colored-pencil drawings combine with hand-painted and monoprinted paper in a striking collage representation of Asawa’s work. D’Aquino provides close-ups of the snail and dragonfly, a landscape layout of basket craftsmen, and a geometric kaleidoscope of squares layered upon squares, offering a variety of perspectives and media. An author’s note explains her inspiration for the book and offers sobering facts about the Asawa family’s internment in various camps—facts that are omitted from the story proper. Additional resources enable young artists to discover this artist’s work for themselves and offer step-by-step instructions to create a folded paper dragonfly.
This distinctive biography brims with artistic vision as it informs about a signature sculptor. (Picture book/biography. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61689-836-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
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
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