Beautifully rendered and told, the book brings to life the work of a gifted 20th-century artist whose creative vision will...
A picture-book tribute to fashion photographer Bill Cunningham.
From fashion and beauty journalist and children’s author Blumenthal comes a touching tale of one of New York’s most beloved and slightly eccentric fashion icons. With his signature “blue French worker’s jacket, tan pants, and black sneakers” and a camera “slung around his neck,” for decades Cunningham cycled the streets of Manhattan, seeking both the figures who made fashion and those who consumed and put it proudly on display each day. “He who seeks beauty will find it,” said Cunningham, the humble hat maker–turned-photojournalist who single-handedly created the genre of street-fashion photography, presenting the images of regular people and models together in his New York Times photo column “like squares on a story quilt.” D’yans’ scintillating watercolors, depicting Bill in action on the street or his subjects who “looked like leopards in their leopard prints, …dudes in dots and spots,” perfectly match Cunningham’s unassuming edginess with their ragged splashes of brilliant color and deft smear technique that creates a three-dimensional illusion of motion. Seasoning her spare text just so with Cunningham’s own voice (sourced in notes), Blumenthal effectively communicates her admiration for her subject.
Beautifully rendered and told, the book brings to life the work of a gifted 20th-century artist whose creative vision will always be in vogue. (author’s note, bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 4-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4998-0664-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little Bee Books
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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For every dreaming girl (and boy) with a pencil in hand (or keyboard) and a story to share.
A multiaward–winning author recalls her childhood and the joy of becoming a writer.
Writing in free verse, Woodson starts with her 1963 birth in Ohio during the civil rights movement, when America is “a country caught / / between Black and White.” But while evoking names such as Malcolm, Martin, James, Rosa and Ruby, her story is also one of family: her father’s people in Ohio and her mother’s people in South Carolina. Moving south to live with her maternal grandmother, she is in a world of sweet peas and collards, getting her hair straightened and avoiding segregated stores with her grandmother. As the writer inside slowly grows, she listens to family stories and fills her days and evenings as a Jehovah’s Witness, activities that continue after a move to Brooklyn to reunite with her mother. The gift of a composition notebook, the experience of reading John Steptoe’s Stevieand Langston Hughes’ poetry, and seeing letters turn into words and words into thoughts all reinforce her conviction that “[W]ords are my brilliance.” Woodson cherishes her memories and shares them with a graceful lyricism; her lovingly wrought vignettes of country and city streets will linger long after the page is turned.
For every dreaming girl (and boy) with a pencil in hand (or keyboard) and a story to share. (Memoir/poetry. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-399-25251-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
Memorable art earns this biography a respectable place on the shelf.
George Washington Carver tended a secret garden of flowers before becoming known for his skill in agriculture.
The book opens in 1921 as Carver addresses the U.S. Congress, astounding them with dozens of uses for the peanut. The narration then takes readers back to Carver’s childhood to discover how he reached that career highlight. As a child, he loved flowers, but he was warned not to waste time on plants that couldn’t be eaten or sold, so he kept his colorful garden hidden in the woods. Shut out of schools because he was black, he studied nature independently and learned through experimentation. Eventually, he started caring for neighbors’ sick plants, becoming known as “the Plant Doctor.” At 12, he left the farm on which he was raised and attained a formal education, after which he taught students at the Tuskegee Institute and farmers with a mobile classroom mounted on a wagon. This journey through Carver’s childhood and accomplishments ends with Carver’s simple but memorable words, “Regard Nature. Revere Nature. Respect Nature.” The substantial text holds readers on each spread long enough to appreciate not only the subject matter of the painted illustrations, but Morrison’s artistic techniques—strong strokes and careful dots, artful combinations of textures and shapes—which create lush forest scenes and portraitlike human faces and forms. The childhood story feels more cohesive than the final pages, which list his adult accomplishments but lack the narrative thread.
Memorable art earns this biography a respectable place on the shelf. (timeline, bibliography, further reading) (Picture book/biography. 4-9)Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-243015-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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