ART AGAINST THE ODDS

“Outsider” art—that made by prisoners, the mentally ill, children, and women—form Rubin’s subject, and she handles it fairly well in so small a volume. She aims her text at middle-graders, and the writing is not always smooth, however, she tackles a lot in four chapters. All self-taught, the subjects include the art of Henry Darger and Adolf Wöffli, both schizophrenics; art made by those imprisoned, including convicts, children in concentration camps and in Japanese internment in the US during WWII; quilts made by slaves and by free women as narrative and symbol; and art made by young people from the South Bronx to Uganda. While she does make clear how art can be made in the harshest of circumstances, she doesn’t address head-on the obvious need for human beings to make art no matter how desperate or squalid the situation. Many illustrations prove the one-picture/thousand-words equation. (Nonfiction. 9-12)