by Annemarie van Haeringen ; illustrated by Annemarie van Haeringen ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2016
The drama of the artist’s fulfillment of his creative desires through this direct medium is somewhat undercut by the paucity...
The story of the legendary painter’s adoption of paper cutouts as an expressive medium after illness made traditional painting physically impossible is told here through lively pen-and-watercolor sketches.
Nuanced modulation of color, brilliant hues to monochrome and back again, is skillfully implemented. After bright, watercolor scenes of him at work, an almost colorless spread depicts Matisse in his hospital bed. “There’s no color in here. You’d think I was dead. What a nightmare! Fetch my brushes! Fetch my paints!” exclaims the painter. Successive spreads show him generating color as he creates, reinforcing the fact that it was the artist’s desire to embellish and enhance his surroundings that inspired his innovative use of cut paper. His process of creating the cutouts and directing the positioning of them on the walls of his room is well-portrayed, leading up to the revelation that “I’ve made myself a garden to live in, a whole new life.” Like the snail he depicts, the painter slowly rolls in his wheelchair through the oasis he has created against all obstacles. The one obstacle to making this book truly successful is the limited selection of cutouts actually shown, either as copies or reproductions of Matisse originals; there’s no Jazz, no Swimming Pool.
The drama of the artist’s fulfillment of his creative desires through this direct medium is somewhat undercut by the paucity of the visual elements. (biographical note) (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7358-4263-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: NorthSouth
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
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by Jennifer Dussling ; illustrated by Chin Ko ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 20, 2017
A succinct, edifying read, but don’t buy it for the pictures.
Abraham Lincoln’s ascent to the presidency is recounted in a fluid, easy-to-read biography for early readers.
Simple, direct sentences stress Lincoln’s humble upbringing, his honesty, and his devotion to acting with moral conviction. “Lincoln didn’t seem like a man who would be president one day. But he studied hard and became a lawyer. He cared about people and about justice.” Slavery and Lincoln’s signature achievement of emancipation are explained in broad yet defined, understandable analogies. “At that time, in the South, the law let white people own black people, just as they owned a house or a horse.” Readers are clearly given the president’s perspective through some documented memorable quotes from his own letters. “Lincoln did not like slavery. ‘If slavery is not wrong,’ he wrote to a friend ‘nothing is wrong.’ ” (The text does not clarify that this letter was written in 1865 and not before he ascended to the presidency, as implied by the book.) As the war goes on and Lincoln makes his decision to free the slaves in the “Southern states”—“a bold move”—Lincoln’s own words describe his thinking: “ ‘If my name ever goes into history,’ Lincoln said, ‘it will be for this act.’ ” A very basic timeline, which mentions the assassination unaddressed in the text, is followed by backmatter providing photographs, slightly more detailed historical information, and legacy. It’s a pity that the text is accompanied by unremarkable, rudimentary opaque paintings.
A succinct, edifying read, but don’t buy it for the pictures. (Informational early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: June 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-243256-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
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by Lisbeth Kaiser ; illustrated by Leire Salaberria translated by Raquel Pitt ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2016
Stirring encouragement for all “little people” with “big dreams.” (Picture book/biography. 5-7)
“There’s nothing I can’t be,” young Maya thinks, and then shows, in this profile for newly independent readers, imported from Spain.
The inspirational message is conveyed through a fine skein of biographical details. It begins with her birth in St. Louis and the prejudice she experienced growing up in a small Arkansas town and closes with her reading of a poem “about her favorite thing: hope” at Bill Clinton’s presidential inauguration. In between, it mentions the (unspecified) “attack” by her mother’s boyfriend and subsequent elective muteness she experienced as a child, as well as some of the varied pursuits that preceded her eventual decision to become a writer. Kaiser goes on in a closing spread to recap Angelou’s life and career, with dates, beneath a quartet of portrait photos. Salaberria’s simple illustrations, filled with brown-skinned figures, are more idealized than photorealistic, but, though only in the cover image do they make direct contact with readers’, Angelou’s huge eyes are an effective focal point in each scene. The message is similar in the co-published Amelia Earhart, written by Ma Isabel Sánchez Vegara (and also translated by Pitt), but the pictures are more fanciful as illustrator Mariadiamantes endows the aviator with a mane of incandescent orange hair and sends her flying westward (in contradiction of the text and history) on her final around-the-world flight.
Stirring encouragement for all “little people” with “big dreams.” (Picture book/biography. 5-7)Pub Date: July 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-84780-889-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
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