An essential guide to the legacy of a well- and deservedly loved artist.
An illuminating, lavishly illustrated tribute to the works and talents of an iconic writer and illustrator, revised and updated in the wake of his death in March 2020.
Elleman adds books and illustrations published after her 1999 critical work, Tomie dePaola: His Art and His Stories, and reworks some of the original edition’s topical chapters, further buffing her already-lapidary analyses of how and why dePaola’s art works so well with the plethora of texts he illustrated and/or wrote over his long career. Playing to her strengths as an unexcelled observer and describer of picture-book art, she captures both visual and emotional ebbs and flows in dozens of works while raising critical points, such as complaints that too many of his pictures look alike, only so she can demolish them with barrages of counterexamples and well-chosen images of pages, page turns, and full spreads. Though dePaola is perhaps best known for drawing on his own background for authentic evocations of Italian and Italian American culture, Elleman commends his portrayals of diverse racial and ethnic characters in such works as his volume of Mother Goose rhymes. Sample pages of a picture book from first draft to finished layout present a revealing case study in his process, and an extended closing album of his “non-book” paintings offers convincing evidence of both his versatility and a distinctive style that shines through no matter the medium or subject. Specific biographical details are limited, but as Trina Schart Hyman writes in her introductory tribute (present in both this and the 1999 work), “the artist always draws or paints him- or herself, no matter what the subject and no matter what or how the approach.” Even devoted fans will come away knowing and liking dePaola more.
An essential guide to the legacy of a well- and deservedly loved artist. (endnotes, lists of publications and of awards, notes on art media, index) (Nonfiction. 12-adult)Pub Date: March 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5344-1226-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
It's high spirited reading.
When Françoise Gilot, an aspiring young painter, met Pablo Picasso in May, 1943, she was twenty-one years old, he some forty years her senior.
As they grew together, setting about their mutual campaigns upon each other, she proved herself a worthy adversary rather than acolyte. In the ten years which she shared with him, undertaking to assuage his solitude, bearing him two children, meeting his friend and admirers, she maintained a cool comprehension along with her compassion for Picasso the man that shows to delightful advantage here. For Françoise Gilot has the capacity to reveal the man in his intimate and professional dealings, and Picasso is superlative, inimitable copy. Witness Picasso dangling his agents, foremost among them Kahnweller, fancing with his friends Braque and Matisse, playing cat and mouse with the women in his life -- wife Olga, Marie Therese Walter, Dora Marr, Françoise and her successor Jacqueline Roque. But the author has the capacity as well to show Picasso the artist: she quotes him on painting, describes his method of work in painting, sculpture, pottery. Picasso himself is so articulate that he defies other description; au fond, art and the artist are subversive. His re-marks on art include not only his own but that of his foremost colleagues, Matisse and Braque, Miro, Legor, Chagall...All his encounters here are formed by his own formidable temperament, and recalled in satisfying detail by the woman who shared them. An intimate, vivid, above all intelligent and authentic portrait of Picasso, with its twin elements of love and art, this should sell like mad. And rightly.
It's high spirited reading.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9781681373195
Page Count: 384
Publisher: NYRB Classics
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1964
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
As an introduction to women’s power and possibilities, this choice rises above the rest.
Twenty-four women leaders are pictured as models of working “like a girl” in this rhyming inspirational poem.
The endpapers present the multicultural roster of talented, hardworking women and girls, all apparently cis, depicted in grayscale portraits with their names below their pictures. Each page holds one line of a rhyming couplet with one woman at work in illustrations composed of strong shapes and vivid colors. “Stand up like a girl, by refusing to stand”—Rosa Parks sits calmly on an (empty) bus, looking out at readers; “Stand up like a girl, by extending your hand”—Mother Teresa offers a bowl of rice to three children of different races. Malala Yousafzai raises a fist in the air, holding a “Resist” sign and surrounded by other feminist signs at a protest march; the young Ruby Bridges stands facing a crowd with calm dignity, with the text “keep on going; persist.” Leaders who overcame challenges, such as Hellen Keller and Tammy Duckworth, “prevail like a girl.” Artists, architects, and writers like Frida Kahlo and Zaha Hadid all “create like a girl.” Pilots and astronauts “soar,” athletes “train,” philanthropists and activists “change the world like a girl.” Minibiographies at the end of the book introduce the major accomplishments of each featured leader, helping this book to double as a fun read-aloud and an informative lead-in to further research.
As an introduction to women’s power and possibilities, this choice rises above the rest. (bibliography) (Informational picture book. 4-12)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4549-3302-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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