(1) K-3 When a sandstorm makes "the city orange -- the sun like a tangerine, the waves like clementine peels," Sakina and her mother spend the day at a museum. While her mother is moved to tears, Sakina is confused by the sculptures of a "chubby crocodile filled with papers," of a jaguar guarding Hammurabi's Code, and of winged lions. She throws herself on the floor in exasperation at "these old, boring, boring things." A few sculptures follow her home, where they cause a ruckus. Sakina realizes the crocodile is stuffed with poems, one of which pleads, "I hope they will remember me." Looking at her grandmother's photo, Sakina cries as she finally understands that the crocodile is a memorial. Watercolor and ink illustrations bring the unnamed city to life as yellow sand-coated landscapes contrast with blue waters, palm trees, and Arabic letters and calligraphic inscriptions that float in the air. Sculptures wink, strut, stretch, and sneak into backpacks. Art (the "uninvited guests") literally comes alive and shows Sakina how the "old" and "boring" can be fascinating and connected to family histories. This imaginative book invites readers to learn more about their heritage through art; the illustrations beg multiple viewings to notice details. An author's note adds context about the ancient artwork and the etymology of the citrus fruit Sakina enjoys.

Reviewer: Julie Hakim Azzam | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2025

(1) K-3 Illustrated by Jamie Green. This picture-book biography of Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) uses lines (straight, curved, wavy; physical and imaginary) as metaphors connecting the artist’s life experiences to the sculptures she created. Growing up in rural California, young Ruth attended Japanese school on Saturdays where she “traced arcs in the air with bamboo swords” and practiced calligraphy as “bold black lines stretched across white paper.” She straddles an invisible line that separates the Japanese food, customs, and language at home from those at school. When Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, that invisible line becomes a wall. Incarcerated with her family at the Rohwer Relocation Center in Arkansas, Ruth is eventually allowed to attend college but isn’t allowed to complete her student teaching because of her race; “her path would not be a straight line.” Later, Ruth travels to Mexico and is fascinated by the wire baskets used to carry eggs. Thinking back to the barbed wire at Rohwer, Ruth twists wire into sculpture, showing that “a line could go anywhere, be anything.” After marriage, Ruth refuses to choose between career and family, so she “zigged and zagged” and made art while raising six children. Like her life path, Ruth’s sculptures “curve and curl, with lines that overlap and intersect, connect and divide.” Green’s illustrations nicely complement the thoughtful and well-researched text; brilliant blues against brown backgrounds add visual contrast, highlighting important people and moments. An author’s note, a bibliography, and photos are appended.

Reviewer: Jennifer M. Brabander | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2025

(1) YA Selznick’s first young adult work is imbued with romance and mystery, bookended with long, cinematic passages of textural, wordless, black-and-white illustrations in his signature style. A sixteen-year-old American transplanted to Rome for the summer of 1986 meets an enigmatic Italian teenager via a “speaking statue” and mutual admiration for obelisks -- in particular, Bernini’s Elephant and Obelisk. Known for most of the book only by the names they bestow on each other, “Danny” and “Angelo” are quickly swept into a relationship built on devotion, risk-taking, and mythmaking -- inspired by the ancient city itself. A sprawling narrative through line seemingly conjured by Angelo details the tragic romance between the elephant obelisk’s true sculptor and his sea-loving partner. This story is bolstered by several other tales of gay love un-earthed by Danny and Angelo, some revelatory in nature. Yet Danny’s reluctance to reveal his relationship to his paleographer mother creates a shadow of tension matched only by the young lovers’ awareness of their inevitable separation at summer’s end. In sensitively written first-person past tense (with occasional yearning passages told from a years-later perspective), Selznick builds thematic layer upon layer through poetic language, references to real-world art, and detailed imagery. Readers are guided expertly through a unified narrative and, along with Danny, toward a belief that art, history, and ancestors are evidence “that miracles could happen, and that love could blossom in the midst of impossible odds, even when people didn’t want you to exist.”

Reviewer: Patrick Gall | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2025

(2) 4-6 This graphic-format biography of Japanese American artist Asawa (1926 2013) begins on December 7, 1941, as teenage Ruth and her farming family hear that Japan has attacked Pearl Harbor. Soon the FBI arrests her father ("They think he's dangerous? He can't even kill a chicken for dinner"), and the rest of the family are sent to Santa Anita Racetrack, where they must sleep in horse stables. But luckily for Ruth, interned Disney animators are teaching drawing classes. "Everything was gray until I met the cartoonists...Truly, art saved me." After the family is sent to the Rohwer Relocation Center in Arkansas, Ruth receives a college scholarship. She studies art education in Milwaukee -- then isn't allowed to graduate; the war has ended, but prejudice hasn't. At the experimental Black Mountain College in North Carolina, Ruth thrives and begins working on the wire sculptures for which she becomes so well known. A theme throughout is Ruth's sheer determination -- to not become a farmer; to study art; to marry the white man she loved despite their families' disapproval, to have children ("I want six") and still be an artist. Gratifyingly, the book closes with her doing just that. Nakahira's black-and-white illustrations, clear and direct, allow viewers to see both the helplessness and courage of those who were forcibly incarcerated. The art is also ideal for illuminating the lines, shapes, and empty spaces of Asawa's famous wire sculptures. Appended are further biographical information, a reading list, and photos of the artist and her work.

Reviewer: Jennifer M. Brabander | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2024

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Dan Santat. In this entertaining picture book, the duo behind Drawn Together (rev. 7/18) explores friendship and resilience through imaginative play. The two main characters first meet as toddlers after bumping into each other while playing with blocks. As they grow older, their friendship and their creations evolve: the ever-more-elaborate structures incorporate Asian mythological motifs and use a variety of materials, including cardboard, tape, wood, and paint. Each time, their project fails. An argument over the collapse of a creation leads to an important epiphany: "Some things are too important to give up on. Some things deserve to be repaired, no matter how many times they break." Lê's succinct, expressive storytelling and Santat's vivid colored-pencil, watercolor, and digital illustrations are both energetic celebrations of these particular, fictional projects and friendships and a possible metaphor for all such creative collaborations (and those characters do bear some resemblance to their creators).

Reviewer: Michelle Lee | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2024

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Shelley Couvillion. Dale Chihuly (b. 1941) was drawn to light, color, and glass from an early age. As a young man, a formative trip to Europe and Israel sparked his interest in glassblowing as an art form. When he returned home, he enrolled in a newly established studio program and perfected his craft among a community of artisans before returning to Venice to learn from the very best. Glassblowing quickly became his life, and when he came back to the U.S., he formed his own distinguished school in the Pacific Northwest and developed his signature style. Not even a devastating car accident -- which required 256 stitches and left him blind in one eye -- could stop him, and after fifty years he remains the preeminent American artist in this medium. Mentyka incorporates an overview of the glassblowing process in her narrative, and Couvillion complements the text with a series of striking illustrations, mostly in double-page spreads, and some detailed depictions of Chihuly's more fanciful creations in the culminating pages. For another biographical treatment for a slightly older audience, check out Greenberg and Jordan's World of Glass (rev. 7/20). Notes, a glossary, and a timeline are appended.

Reviewer: Jonathan Hunt | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2025

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham. "On a North Carolina farm, massive towers with moving parts spin and sound in the breeze. Did space aliens create these contraptions?" At the opening of this picture-book biography, a tangle of colors and shapes and a burst of visual onomatopoeia ("WHIRR, CREEEAK. Plink, plink") introduce readers to the plucky machinist and inventor Vollis Simpson (1919–2013) and his "whirligigs." The narrative shows how his childhood interest in the mechanics of objects established his career path: "Vollis aimed to make machines work better." Illustrations add to the down-home feel of the story while helping readers visualize some of Simpson's more original improvements, such as a wind-powered washing machine invented during WWII using parts from a downed B-29 bomber. An injury in his sixties forces Simpson to close his machine-repair shop and ultimately propels him, "bored as a two by four," to begin making the colorful whirligig windmills that will become his legacy. Color and sound ("Whistle, Whir, BOING, BOING") keep the story energetic and busy to match the spirit of its subject, and the illustrations become ever more fanciful as Simpson's windmill farm grows. Back matter includes an author's note, a bibliography, and the lyrics to "Vollis Simpson's Windmill Farm" (to the tune of "Old MacDonald").

Reviewer: Julie Roach | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2025

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Cátia Chien. In this powerful picture book, readers learn about artist/activist/filmmaker Ai Weiwei, the worldwide refugee crisis, and the effects art can have in shining a light on humanitarian issues. Readers meet Ai Weiwei in contemporary times as he helps a large group of newly arrived refugees in boats landing on a Greek beach. Flashing back, the text relates that his own tumultuous childhood in a 1960s Chinese labor camp was when he started making art using ordinary objects. The book's main focus is on his notable protest artwork, visually referenced on the pages; the story concludes by returning to the plight of current-day "wave riders." Ho's vivid, expressive prose and Chien's bright orange and blue impressionistic pencil and pastel drawings--incorporating waves, life jackets, and documentary photographs--inspire empathy for the refugees, many of whom are young children or families. More straightforward biographical details appear in the back matter; and Ho writes that Ai Weiwei's "art and activism call on us, the citizens of the world, to lift each other up." This book is a good companion read for Ho's Playing at the Border (rev. 9/21) and Gravel's What Is a Refugee?

Reviewer: Michelle Lee | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2023

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Claire Keane. This story spans decades, introducing two artists separately until Nancy Schön (born 1928) begins work on her sculptures of Robert McCloskey's (1914–2003) beloved duckling characters for Boston's Public Garden. Kunkel (­Digging for Words, rev. 1/21) dips into and out of each creator's story line smoothly and effectively, advancing the narrative to get to the heart of the book: how an illustrator's drawings were re-envisioned by a sculptor as three-dimensional public art. Keane's digital illustrations on sepia-tinted backgrounds have an appropriately vintage look; her loose lines and energetic compositions are a good match for the conversational (and lengthy) text. After some brief background about each artist's early years, three double-page spreads neatly outline McCloskey's path to the publication of Make Way for Ducklings in 1941. Schön's artistic career is more circuitous (raising a family is her priority), and she receives less recognition; once she conceives of the duckling project, Kunkel focuses on the sculptor's meticulous process, along with the added pressure of interpreting a living artist's iconic characters. Scenes of meetings between McCloskey and Schön reveal how the two navigated a potentially tricky collaboration. An author's note and timeline provide more detail about the subjects and the sculptures. For more on McCloskey and the creation of his Caldecott Medal–winning book, read Smith's Mr. McCloskey's Marvelous Mallards (rev. 11/22).

Reviewer: Kitty Flynn | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2023

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Jennifer Mack-Watkins. Elijah Pierce was a Black Mississippi folk artist born in 1892 in a log cabin. In this imagined encounter, a young Black boy gets his hair cut at Pierce's barbershop and is treated to a tour of the barbershop's art gallery, featuring Pierce's wood carvings. "Sculptures and walking sticks. Models and message signs...Everyday people. And famous people. Everything I carve, I want it to tell some kind of story." Mack-Watkins uses printmaking techniques and mixed-media collage to create colorful, textured art representing Pierce's folk art. The brief narrative works on several levels. It showcases the artist and his work and how he was instrumental in the growing recognition of folk art in the American art scene. We also see how Pierce's art inspires a young boy's burgeoning interest in making art of his own. The story would pair well with Tate and Christie's It Jes' Happened: When Bill Traylor Started to Draw (rev. 5/12). Back matter includes an authors' note, images of Pierce's art, an artist's note, a timeline, and a list of museums where Pierce's work is shown.

Reviewer: Dean Schneider | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2023

(1) K-3 Illustrated by Elizabeth Haidle. In his author's note, Neri (When Paul Met Artie, rev. 3/18) mentions that he met Christo and Jeanne-Claude briefly in the early 2000s and was able to interview Christo before the artist's 2020 death. This enlightening picture-book biography is infused with the author's respect for the unorthodox couple and their artistic legacy. The book focuses on the husband and wife's symbiotic creative partnership. As Neri tells it, when Jeanne-Claude first encounters Christo's small-scale (at the time) wrapped sculptures, her questions could be our own: "Why are you wrapping these silly objects in cloth and rope?" As she comes to understand Christo's vision and mission, readers do too. The dialogue-heavy text itself is a creative risk that pays off. Neri explains that, while some dialogue is from quotations, "as a narrative device, I've put their ideas into the context of a conversation to illustrate their back-and-forth...and highlight the concepts they played with." Haidle's (Before They Were Artists) energetic mixed-media illustrations in an understated earth-tone palette help convey the interactive spirit of the text and reflect art's relationship with the natural world. Read alongside Boxer's Covered in Color: Christo & Jeanne-Claude's Fabrics of Freedom (rev. 11/22); each book brings a different approach to its subjects. A bibliography and "fun facts" about the artists are appended. (Source notes for the quotations are listed on the author's website.)

Reviewer: Kitty Flynn | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2023

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Susanna Chapman. This reverent picture-book biography of the art-world pair (focused mainly on Christo) begins with a formative moment in the young man's life. While Nazis search his Bulgarian town for Russian propaganda, Christo's family burns his beloved Russian art books. Nazism is followed by Communism, under which Christo can create only state-sanctioned art; and Boxer draws a through line betweeen political repression and Christo's eventual conception of his and Jeanne-Claude's artwork as "a scream of freedom." Christo later meets and falls in love with Jeanne-Claude in France; the couple moves to New York, where they begin to execute their large-scale art projects, wrapping buildings, coastlines, and islands, and scattering umbrellas across California and Japan. In 2005, they realize their dream of constructing The Gates: twenty-three miles of saffron-curtained archways winding through Central Park. Chapman's loose, diaphanous illustrations capture the whimsy and exuberance of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's art. Figures peek through the luminous layers of watercolor as if wrapped in sheer curtains, and abstract designs depict times of emotional turmoil and triumph. Author and artist notes offer more biographical details and invite readers to contemplate the meaning behind the art installations, and a list of recommended sources encourages further exploration of this idiosyncratic pair.

Reviewer: K Rachael Stein | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2022

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Elizabeth Zunon. This picture-book biography is a fascinating introduction to Ghanaian artist El Anatsui and his innovative artistic process. Early pages present Anatsui's childhood love of artmaking in the British colony of the Gold Coast. When he was a teenager, in 1957, his country achieved independence as the nation of Ghana, and Goldberg stirringly writes, "With this new freedom, he felt a shift." Anatsui's own words follow: "We could decide to do things on our own terms." Words and pictures guide readers to see how liberation on this national scale translated into Anatsui's artistic quest to freely express himself by experimenting with diverse media and developing new techniques. Zunon's (I Am Farmer, rev. 1/19; Grandpa Cacao, rev. 5/19) use of paint and cut-paper collage is particularly well suited to depicting Anatsui's life and artistry; it echoes his own evolving process of using found materials and assembling them in his artwork. Throughout, the illustrations' style is largely realistic, and shifts in visual perspective invite the reader to home in on pivotal moments. For example, when Anatsui finds a discarded bag of bottle tops at the side of the road, Zunon spotlights him holding one. The next spread eschews background detail to show Anatsui's hands manipulating the bottle tops as he develops a technique for creating the massive, fabric-like sculptures that brought him international acclaim. Back matter provides additional context and sources while inviting readers to get their own hands involved in creating art.

Reviewer: Megan Dowd Lambert | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2022

(2) 4-6 In this picture book for an older audience than Yang's A Boy Named Isamu (rev. 9/21), Hughes presents an impressionistic biography of artist Isamu Noguchi. The book's emotional journey begins with an elderly Noguchi shouting into a phone, angrily turning down an invitation to represent the United States in an important art exhibition. Rejected too many times in both America and Japan, Noguchi "felt like a snail and called himself one." To calm down, he decides to build an akari, a lamp sculpted out of paper and bamboo, though difficult memories arise as he works. Born to a white American mother and a Japanese father, Noguchi grew up in both the U.S. and Japan yet never felt he belonged in either; World War II only deepened his sense of alienation. In her illustrations Hughes makes use of spirals and whorls to play with the snail theme: the artist often works so ferociously he's like a "typhoon"; coiled shapes fill his memories--Japanese ferns, wood shavings, his curly hair as a child; and, finally, there's the rounded shell-like body of the light-filled lamp, his finished product. Noguchi feels "love from the akari's glow" and changes his mind about the invitation; his work at the exhibition ultimately includes a room filled with akari--"a room full of light." In an author's note, Hughes says that while critics at the time complained that the akari were too commercial, she considers them "sculptures of joy...of lightness, impermanence." A brief bibliography is appended.

Reviewer: Jennifer M. Brabander | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2023

(1) YA Despite her prominence during the Harlem Renaissance, sculptor Augusta Savage (1892–1962) remains largely unknown to younger generations. Through her accomplished verse, Nelson (My Seneca Village, rev. 11/15, and many others) introduces young-adult readers to Savage's life and work. From an early age, Savage faced hardship because of her art, including physical abuse from her father, but she continued to sculpt. The book chronicles her path: teaching art; meeting other artists in Harlem; studying in Europe, after some setbacks; having her work displayed at the World's Fair; opening the U.S.'s first Black-owned and operated gallery. The poems create a picture not only of Savage's life but also of the art she created, with several concrete poems taking on the shapes of her sculptures. The book also includes period photos of many of the sculptures that Savage created--particularly important because much of her work was lost or destroyed due to lack of funds to preserve or move it. An afterword by Tammi Lawson, curator at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, provides more context and biographical information. A wonderful addition to young people's literature on African American artists.

Reviewer: Nicholl Denice Montgomery | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2022

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Sam Boughton. Not a formally trained artist, Nek Chand built the famed Rock Garden in Chandigarh, India, "rock by rock," using discarded and found materials. Bradbury's text illuminates the artist's intuitive creative process as a means of easing his feelings of dislocation and homesickness after the Partition of India causes him and other Hindus to depart their ancestral villages, now considered part of the new Muslim nation of Pakistan. "That missing moved from his heart into his hands, and his hands knew what to do," writes Bradbury in the scene where Chand first finds the secluded piece of land on which he builds the garden, with its myriad sculptures, structures, and a "maze of tunnels and paths and arches and stairs." The garden serves as both a monument to the home Chand lost and a secret means of bringing joy and beauty to his new home. When others discover the garden (now grown to cover over forty acres), they are astounded, and the community rallies to save it from officials who threaten to tear it down in the name of development. Throughout, Boughton's illustrations burst with color. The art emulates Chand's use of found materials in its incorporation of newsprint and fabrics into digital collage. The illustrations make several overt references to some of Chand's actual figures, structures, and mosaics, with back-matter pages treating readers to photographs of the Rock Garden and of Chand himself. Pair with Rosenstock and Nivola's The Secret Kingdom (rev. 3/18).

Reviewer: Megan Dowd Lambert | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 2021

(2) K-3 Throughout this picture-book biography of Asawa (1926–2013), a Japanese American creator of nature-inspired wire sculptures, there's an emphasis on the handmade--from a childhood on a farm to her college studies to learning basket-weaving from a craftsperson in Mexico. The illustrations evoke the handmade; charcoal and colored-pencil drawings are combined with hand-painted and monoprinted paper in distinctive, naive-style collages. More about Asawa's life and a "Make Your Own Paper Dragonfly" activity are appended. Bib.

Reviewer: Katrina Hedeen | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2019

(1) K-3 Illustrated by Hadley Hooper. After struggling for years, Swiss-born twentieth-century sculptor Alberto Giacometti found fame for his tall, spindly figures (e.g., Walking Man series), while Diego (who later become known for his furniture designs) worked tirelessly to support his brother's art. The book touches on life events in snapshot-like sections that nevertheless provide strong impressions. Hooper's art, in paint and ink and finished digitally, is strikingly dynamic. Timeline. Bib.

Reviewer: Katrina Hedeen | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2019

(1) 4-6 In this story of coping with loss and change, lonely twelve-year-old Amelia befriends the local clay studio owner's visiting nephew, Casey, during spring-break week. When they encounter a woman resembling Amelia's mother--who died when Amelia was two--the friends begin to imagine the impossible. The week's cheerlessness morphs into something complex and important as new people enter Amelia's world, enabling her to better understand herself and those she loves.

Reviewer: Julie Roach | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2019

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Jon Klassen. In a companion book to Triangle, Square pushes square boulders to a hilltop. Seeing a resemblance between Square and the block he's pushing, his friend Circle calls Square an artistic genius. Before Square knows it, he's agreed to create a sculpture in Circle's likeness. Angled lines and white space direct readers' eyes across each page, and short sentences, smart dialogue, and word repetition keep the story steadily moving.

Reviewer: Elisa Gall | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 2018