MY NAME IS GEORGIA

A picture-book evocation both fierce and tender of one of America’s greatest painters. Winter uses a first-person narration to tell Georgia O’Keeffe’s story, sometimes with quotations from O’Keeffe’s own writings, but always capturing the sound of her voice: “God told me if I painted that mountain enough, he’d give it to me.” O’Keeffe knew what she wanted from a very young age; readers and listeners follow her journey from Wisconsin, where she was born, to art school in Chicago, to Texas, then to New York, and on to New Mexico. In the illustrations, O’Keeffe grows from a very young girl to a very old woman; evoked (not copied) in these pages are many of the motifs found in her paintings—red hills, blue sky, huge flowers, graceful bones. A powerful message, precisely told, as fine as Michael Bedard’s Emily (1992) or Barbara Cooney’s Eleanor (1996). (bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 4-10)