A tribute to a giant of children’s literature and an artist’s need to put color on the page.
Mackenzie presents a picture book biography of children’s author Barbara Cooney.
“When she was a wisp of a girl, Barbara Cooney spent her summers in Maine,” the opening text reads, accompanied by an image of a blond, stick-legged Cooney looking out at a bright blue bay under a clear sky. This prefaces the evolution of her wild settings and love of travel, but there seems to be little to say about young, middle-class New Yorker Barbara, other than to note her desire to paint well, “like Mama”: “She went to school and came home and did her homework. Pretty soon she was all grown up.” Immediately after schooling, Cooney starts work as a children’s picture book illustrator, frustrated by publishers’ reluctance to print in expensive color. Her Massachusetts environs, including a barn door and chickens, inspires her first color book, Chanticleer and the Fox, which allows her to advance her artistic career and gives her license to work with a wider palette. Ewen’s illustrations echo Cooney’s, with lupins, natural landscapes, and penciled shading, though the colors are brighter, the botanical details less specific, and the domestic, cozy Americana depicted less mysterious than the evocative pictures or complicated worlds of Cooney’s own classics.
A tribute to a giant of children’s literature and an artist’s need to put color on the page.Pub Date: June 17, 2024
ISBN: 9781956393040
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Waxwing Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A supplemental rather than introductory book on the great artist.
Frida Kahlo’s strong affection for and identification with animals form the lens through which readers view her life and work in this picture-book biography.
Each two-page spread introduces one or more of her pets, comparing her characteristics to theirs and adding biographical details. Confusingly for young readers, the beginning pages reference pets she owned as an adult, yet the illustrations and events referred to come from earlier in her life. Bonito the parrot perches in a tree overlooking young Frida and her family in her childhood home and pops up again later, just before the first mention of Diego Rivera. Granizo, the fawn, another pet from her adult years, is pictured beside a young Frida and her father along with a description of “her life as a little girl.” The author’s note adds important details about Kahlo’s life and her significance as an artist, as well as recommending specific paintings that feature her beloved animals. Expressive acrylic paintings expertly evoke Kahlo’s style and color palette. While young animal lovers will identify with her attachment to her pets and may enjoy learning about the Aztec origins of her Xolo dogs and the meaning of turkeys in ancient Mexico, the book may be of most interest to those who already have an interest in Kahlo’s life.
A supplemental rather than introductory book on the great artist. (Picture book/biography. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7358-4269-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: NorthSouth
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A unique angle on a watershed moment in the civil rights era.
The New Orleans school child who famously broke the color line in 1960 while surrounded by federal marshals describes the early days of her experience from a 6-year-old’s perspective.
Bridges told her tale to younger children in 2009’s Ruby Bridges Goes to School, but here the sensibility is more personal, and the sometimes-shocking historical photos have been replaced by uplifting painted scenes. “I didn’t find out what being ‘the first’ really meant until the day I arrived at this new school,” she writes. Unfrightened by the crowd of “screaming white people” that greets her at the school’s door (she thinks it’s like Mardi Gras) but surprised to find herself the only child in her classroom, and even the entire building, she gradually realizes the significance of her act as (in Smith’s illustration) she compares a small personal photo to the all-White class photos posted on a bulletin board and sees the difference. As she reflects on her new understanding, symbolic scenes first depict other dark-skinned children marching into classes in her wake to friendly greetings from lighter-skinned classmates (“School is just school,” she sensibly concludes, “and kids are just kids”) and finally an image of the bright-eyed icon posed next to a soaring bridge of reconciliation. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A unique angle on a watershed moment in the civil rights era. (author and illustrator notes, glossary) (Autobiographical picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-338-75388-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
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