Emotionally rich, if so sketchy that the subject remains a remote figure.
A loving portrait of an intense, solitary American artist who found ways to express deep feelings in her minimalist abstractions.
Author Martin (no relation to the artist) may be overreaching when he claims that painter Agnes Martin (1912-2004) is as famous as Georgia O’Keeffe and Frida Kahlo, and rather than providing concrete biographical details or even acknowledging that she was diagnosed with schizophrenia, he makes oblique references to her art materials and emotional extremes (such as her early tendency to set unsatisfactory work on fire). Still, in rapturous prose, he does coherently retrace her artistic development as she learned better ways of expressing her deep love for nature and the world with an “ordinary line” and shimmering colors: “Agnes’s ordered and controlled grid paintings of joy became translucent and expansive band paintings of happiness.” Hampe follows along, adding straight and flowing lines over subtle washes of transparent color and focusing more on evocations of select works than on depicting the artist herself. Readers catch only brief glimpses of a stylized face, a pair of hands, and a small figure who, even in the afterword’s one photo, is turned away from viewers. Readers’ appreciation for the qualities and appeal of her art will be further whetted by the occasional direct quote.
Emotionally rich, if so sketchy that the subject remains a remote figure. (list of works mentioned, citations for quotes and anecdotes, sources) (Picture-book biography. 7-9)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781949480535
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
The legions of fans who over the years have enjoyed dePaola’s autobiographical picture books will welcome this longer gathering of reminiscences. Writing in an authentically childlike voice, he describes watching the new house his father was building go up despite a succession of disasters, from a brush fire to the hurricane of 1938. Meanwhile, he also introduces family, friends, and neighbors, adds Nana Fall River to his already well-known Nana Upstairs and Nana Downstairs, remembers his first day of school (“ ‘ When do we learn to read?’ I asked. ‘Oh, we don’t learn how to read in kindergarten. We learn to read next year, in first grade.’ ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll be back next year.’ And I walked right out of school.”), recalls holidays, and explains his indignation when the plot of Disney’s “Snow White” doesn’t match the story he knows. Generously illustrated with vignettes and larger scenes, this cheery, well-knit narrative proves that an old dog can learn new tricks, and learn them surpassingly well. (Autobiography. 7-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-399-23246-X
Page Count: 58
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1999
Throughout my young days at school and just afterwards a number of things happened to me that I have never forgotten. . . . Some are funny. Some are painful. Some are unpleasant. I suppose that is why I have always remembered them so vividly." Vividly indeed: with the intimate, confiding tone of a born storyteller, Dahl turns each of his family/school memories into a miniature adventure, thriller, or horror-story—with the earthy emphasis on pleasure (food, comradeship), fear, and pain. After a brief, charming slice of family-history, explaining how his Norwegian parents came to live and prosper in Wales, Dahl gets right down to business. From the years at Llandaff Cathedral School (ages 7-9, 1923-25), there's a candy-by-candy tribute to the local sweet-shop, site of "The Great Mouse Plot": Roald and friends, fed up with the meanness of filthy sweet-shop-owner Mrs. Pratchett, secretly put a dead mouse in the Gobstopper jar—but suffered mightily for their glorious prank. (Mrs. P. reported the crime to the Headmaster—unleashing the first of many school-career canings, all described in gruesome, technicolor detail.) Summer vacations in Norway are also recalled in a mixture of ecstasy—the fish, the scenery—and agony: an operation for adenoid removal without any anesthetic. And the extremes of pleasure and pain continue through Dahl's years at two English boarding schools: homesickness, sadistic Matrons and Masters, practical jokes, the indignities of "fagging" (warming up the toilet-seat for older boys), chocolates. . . and, always, the dreaded Headmaster's cane. ("By now I am sure you will be wondering why I lay so much emphasis upon school beatings in these pages. The answer is that. . . I couldn't get over it. I never have got over it.") Some readers may be put off by Dahl's style here—chatty, bedtime-story-ish, deceptively avuncular. Others might not take to the British references (no special explanations for a US audience), or the particularly British approach—full of bitter humor and odd relish—to grisly, gory matters. But those who've appreciated Dahl in various forms will find both the master of chills and the lover of chocolate here—in a fine, juicy collage of funny/awful boyhood highlights.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1984
ISBN: 0374373744
Page Count: -
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1984
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