Esling’s appealing style makes for an exceptional instruction manual.
A teacher shares the experience of his vibrant elementary school art class in a debut textbook with elements of memoir.
This engaging exploration of an Australian children’s art course incorporates the work of Esling’s young students as well as creative exercises that nascent artists will find valuable. Along the way, the author draws on years of experience teaching painting to elementary school students in Tasmania. It’s mostly a teachers’ manual, with Esling offering his thoughts on essential art materials and how to organize a classroom before launching into a series of art activities. Chapters include “Fun With Abstracts,” “Painting Trees,” and “Exploring Watercolours,” with each exercise presented step by step; full-color photos by the author add to the instruction. The seasoned teacher also offers some hard-earned wisdom: “We miss the point of the journey if we cast judgment only upon the finished product,” he writes at one point. “Just think for a moment of [the children’s] personal qualities that have developed because of this creative exploration.” The book is more than 300 pages long, but many, if not most, of them appealingly feature images of the students in action and charming photos of their finished products. Extras include a chapter that details a teacher’s typical day at Esling’s institution, Risdon Vale, from arrival at 8:15 a.m. to departure at 3 p.m., and helpful suggestions on where to display artwork within a school. Thanks to the author’s winning way of conveying his love of teaching, this book works on multiple levels. Artists will enjoy the exercises, and teachers will easily be able to develop a semester’s curriculum based on the thorough, almost diarylike, classroom accounts. The book will even be enjoyed by those who have no interest in teaching or in how to be an artist; it’s simply a compelling read that’s a delightful combination of Dead Poets Society and Making Art 101.
Esling’s appealing style makes for an exceptional instruction manual.Pub Date: July 8, 2022
ISBN: 9781982295011
Page Count: 336
Publisher: BalboaPressAU
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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