“Thomas likes all the colors because he can hear them and smell them and touch them and taste them.” The Black Book of Colors is a monochrome book about discovering color. The pages are all black with small white text. Each page is about a different color. It describes what it feels like or sounds like and …
In my post yesterday, I explained how disappointed I am with Amazon’s lists of best sellers, hot releases, top rated, and most gifted children’s books in the art category. Most of their list is focused on how to…draw, sew, etc. I don’t have anything against “how to” art books. I actually have a few of them that I really like, but they …
Amazon’s recommendations for children’s books on art will teach you a lot about how to draw, but less about how to make art (and not much about how to see art). Amazon’s top 20 best selling children’s books on Art, Music, & Photography do not include a single story about an artist. Even your heavy hitters, like Picasso, Van …
David Carter is probably best known for his pop-up bug books. His newest series on seasons looks interesting, but my favorites are his series on color. After yellow, red, blue, and black, he wrote “White Noise.” As you open this creaking book, abstract, geometric sculptures swish, snap, pop, peal, and crackle. If you listen carefully and move …
When my son ran up to the artwork above squealing, Ruby (the artist) said, “What’s wrong with the world now is that kids aren’t happy.” The painting became the first artwork in my youngest son’s collection. “I am Ruby” is one of the few children’s books that tells the story of a folk artist from the …
The above picture of my child’s artwork is my version of a successful Spring “craft.” When I get out our art supplies it usually starts like you would expect, then it evolves, in this case, into painting on themselves. Next, they decided to paint with mud. Finally, they painted themselves with mud. In my world, that is a …
Over the past month, we read through quite a few books about African American visual arts. The items I surveyed are all listed here. There are a lot of books about Jacob Lawrence, and I hope every public library has a few. I found many written for a child who might be working on their first research …
In the 1960s the Gee’s Bend Ferry was closed, isolating an African American community. Josh Bean reports that in 1996 the government gave a lot of money to re-open it. As of 2006, it is up and running. When the weather warms up and school is out, we plan to take a trip to ride the …
Last summer, my friends and I took our children to Greensboro, Alabama to see two art exhibitions, “A Changing Nature: Photographs of the South, 1963-2014” from the Do Good Fund and Gordon Parks: The Segregation Portfolio. Greensboro is a small town of about 2,700 people. 60% of which are African American. It was a special …
