Fabulous!

A Portrait of Andy Warhol

This post is part of Nonfiction Monday 
hosted today by Check It Out


Christy Ottaviano Books (Henry Holt)

(pub. 5.24. 2011 )  40 pages 

A True Tale with A Cherry On Top 

A uthor and Illustrator: Bonnie Christensen

C haracter: Andy Warhol, the artist

 

O verview from jacket flap: 

      "You might recognize Andy Warhol's famous paintings of Campbell's Soup cans and Coke bottles. But do you know about the artist who created these images?
     Andy Warhol was often sick as a child, yet found comfort in reading comic books and most especially in drawing.  Starting with his early days in Pittsburg in the 1930s and progressing to the height of his glory in the 1960s when he blurred the line between commercial art and fine art, this book chronicles an artist's remarkable path to becoming a renowned Pop Art icon."

 

T antalizing taste: 

       "Just out of art school, Andy Warhol boarded a night train in Pittsburgh.  He carried his portfolio of drawings and two hundred dollars.  'You will do something Great! Crazy! Terrific!' his mother predicted...
     'Spot' - the poor, sick, and shy kid from Pittsburgh - ... transformed himself into the Prince of Pop Art.  Art that anyone could recognize and understand."

and something more:  In this picture book biography, Fabulous! A Portrait of Andy Warhol, Bonnie Christensen's artwork and text capture the artist's essence.  Just this week I was studying a self-portrait of Andy Warhol at SFMOMA where I give tours to school groups as a docent.  In this self portrait, half of his face is shaded. I often ask children and teens to tell me why they think he chose to paint himself that way, and one response is that it might represent his public vs private side.  I plan to share this book and the following thoughts from the Author's Note with students: "Very few people know that Andy Warhol attended church regularly, helped serve Thanksgiving dinners to the homeless, lived most of his adult life with his mother, and possibly suffered from dyslexia or Asperger's syndrome... Full of contradictions, both stated and implied."  

An Eye for Color

The Story of Josef Albers

This post is part of Nonfiction Monday

hosted today by Books Together

 

Henry Holt & Company (MacMillan)
(pub. 9.1.09) 
40 pages

A True Tale with A Cherry On Top

A uthor: Natasha Wing
    Art: Julia Breckenreid

     
C haracter: Josef Albers

 
O verview from jacket flap: 

      "As a child in Germany at the turn of the century, Josef Albers loved to watch his handyman father paint doors as if they were an artist's beautiful canvases. When Josef became an artist himself, it was the forms and colors in the world around him that inspired him most. He reduced an image to its simplest shapes: Buildings became blocks of color.
      Then Josef made an incredible discovery: He could alter the entire mood of a painting jut by changing the way he combined the colors! Color could make one shape jump out at the viewer while another shape seemed to hide in the background..."

T antalizing taste: 

       "For twenty-seven years, Josef created images of squares - more than a thousand of them! For him, there was no end to what he could learn about color.
     'I'm not paying homage to a square,' said Josef. 'It's only the dish I serve my craziness about color in.'
     Today, his squares hang in art galleries around the world, showing that color alone - as simple as it is - can be an exciting form of art."   

and something more:   I thought it was fitting to focus on a biography of an artist for today's Nonfiction Monday roundup at Books Together which includes a focus on "art and museums in children's books." As a docent for school groups at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, I often include Albers' paintings in my tours when we talk about the impact of color.  I now plan to tell students the wonderful background provided in this terrific picture book biography, An Eye for Color - The Story of Josef Albers.  Although I love minimalist and abstract paintings, it can tricky to explain them and answer the question, "Why is THIS painting in a museum?  I could do that!"  I love the story of Albers becoming transfixed by the adobe buildings in Mexico: "Their flat roofs and smooth, sun-dried mud surfaces were both simple and bold.  Over and over again, Josef painted nothing but rectangles. Long rectangles. Tall rectangles. Rectangles within rectangles - all in different combinations of colors." And, of course, it's delightful learning that the author, Natasha Wing, actually lived next door to Josef Albers in Orange, Connecticut!

Pablo Neruda

Poet of the People

This post is part of Nonfiction Monday
hosted today by Chapter Book of the Day

 

Henry Holt and Company (Macmillan)
(pub. 3.29.2011) 
32 pages

A True Tale with A Cherry On Top

A uthor: Monica Brown

              and illustrator: Julie Paschkis

  

C haracter: Pablo Neruda

 
O verview from the jacket flap: 

       "Once there was a little boy named Neftali, who loved wild things wildly and quiet things quietly... Neftali discovered the magic between the pages of books. When he was sixteen, he began publishing his poems as Pablo Neruda.

        Pablo wrote poems about the things he loved - things made by his artist friends, things found at the marketplace, and things he saw in nature.  He wrote about the people of Chile and their stories of struggle. Because above all things and above all words, Pablo Neruda loved people."

T antalizing taste: 

       "From the moment he could talk, Neftali surrounded himself with words that whirled and swirled, just like the river that ran near his home in Chile ...
       He always wrote in green ink - the color of the ferns in the forest and the grass beneath his feet."

and something more:  The ribbons of English and Spanish words in the beautiful illustrations by Julie Paschkis are so evocative of poetry in this terrific picture book biography, Pablo Neruda Poet of the People, by Monica Brown. They remind me of teaching Pablo Neruda's poems to my 7th grade students -- they particularly enjoyed composing their own odes (with much creativity and variety) after studying the rich language in Neruda's odes, such as "Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market" or "Ode to an Artichoke." When my son was volunteering with Habitat for Humanity in Chile, he visited Pablo Neruda's home in Santiago and was amazed by its color and creativity (befitting for such an amazing poet).