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DANCING THROUGH FIELDS OF COLOR

Name: DANCING THROUGH FIELDS OF COLOR
Author: Elizabeth Brown
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3410-6

THE STORY OF HELEN FRANKENTHALER

by Elizabeth Brown ; illustrated by Aimée Sicuro ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 19, 2019

Greatly enthusiastic, but it waters down Frankenthaler’s actual work and importance.

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Abstract expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) carries a deep fascination with color and light from childhood to adulthood.

In Frankenthaler’s wealthy, white Manhattan family, her parents nurture her artistic tendency toward abstraction—but her schools demand realism. A downcast Frankenthaler creeps past eight easels displaying eight identical pear paintings, while across the page, another version of her dances in midair, brushes in both hands, trailing swirls of nonrepresentational orange. In adulthood, she embraces her own path. The narration frames her artistic motivations as primarily emotional, undermining her deliberate aesthetic decisions. Moreover, though the textual descriptions of Frankenthaler’s process are gorgeous (“Colors jetéd across the painting, merged and connected, like rivers into oceans”), neither the colorist’s groundbreaking “soak-stain” technique—oils thinned with turpentine so they seep like watercolors—nor her level of influence as “one of the major Abstract Expressionists of the twentieth century” are mentioned until the bountiful backmatter. Sicuro’s watercolor, ink, and charcoal pencil illustrations are spirited, the ones about art process especially buoyant; her use of watercolor is actually a better match for Frankenthaler’s look than oils would have shown without Frankenthaler’s own soak-stain technique. However, there’s one enormous visual mismatch: Frankenthaler’s work features paint that soaks, flows, bleeds, and wetly saturates canvas, while Sicuro uses mostly controlled and neatly identifiable brush strokes.

Greatly enthusiastic, but it waters down Frankenthaler’s actual work and importance. (timeline, activities, author’s notes, quotes and sources, primary and secondary bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 5-9)

Pub Date: March 19, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-4197-3410-6

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Abrams

Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019

Categories:

CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
LIKE A DIAMOND IN THE SKY
by Elizabeth Brown ; illustrated by Becca Stadtlander

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BASKETBALL DREAMS

by Chris Paul ; illustrated by Courtney Lovett ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 10, 2023

Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses.

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An NBA star pays tribute to the influence of his grandfather.

In the same vein as his Long Shot (2009), illustrated by Frank Morrison, this latest from Paul prioritizes values and character: “My granddad Papa Chilly had dreams that came true,” he writes, “so maybe if I listen and watch him, / mine will too.” So it is that the wide-eyed Black child in the simply drawn illustrations rises early to get to the playground hoops before anyone else, watches his elder working hard and respecting others, hears him cheering along with the rest of the family from the stands during games, and recalls in a prose afterword that his grandfather wasn’t one to lecture but taught by example. Paul mentions in both the text and the backmatter that Papa Chilly was the first African American to own a service station in North Carolina (his presumed dream) but not that he was killed in a robbery, which has the effect of keeping the overall tone positive and the instructional content one-dimensional. Figures in the pictures are mostly dark-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses. (Picture book. 6-8)

Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2023

ISBN: 978-1-250-81003-8

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Roaring Brook Press

Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022

Categories:

CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CHILDREN'S FAMILY | CHILDREN'S ENTERTAINMENT & SPORTS

- BOOK REVIEW
LONG SHOT
by Chris Paul & illustrated by Frank Morrison

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BEFORE SHE WAS HARRIET

by Lesa Cline-Ransome ; illustrated by James E. Ransome ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 7, 2017

A picture book more than worthy of sharing the shelf with Alan Schroeder and Jerry Pinkney’s Minty (1996) and Carole Boston...

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A memorable, lyrical reverse-chronological walk through the life of an American icon.

In free verse, Cline-Ransome narrates the life of Harriet Tubman, starting and ending with a train ride Tubman takes as an old woman. “But before wrinkles formed / and her eyes failed,” Tubman could walk tirelessly under a starlit sky. Cline-Ransome then describes the array of roles Tubman played throughout her life, including suffragist, abolitionist, Union spy, and conductor on the Underground Railroad. By framing the story around a literal train ride, the Ransomes juxtapose the privilege of traveling by rail against Harriet’s earlier modes of travel, when she repeatedly ran for her life. Racism still abounds, however, for she rides in a segregated train. While the text introduces readers to the details of Tubman’s life, Ransome’s use of watercolor—such a striking departure from his oil illustrations in many of his other picture books—reveals Tubman’s humanity, determination, drive, and hope. Ransome’s lavishly detailed and expansive double-page spreads situate young readers in each time and place as the text takes them further into the past.

A picture book more than worthy of sharing the shelf with Alan Schroeder and Jerry Pinkney’s Minty (1996) and Carole Boston Weatherford and Kadir Nelson’s Moses (2006). (Picture book/biography. 5-8)