An esoteric look at the artistic process that preaches to the choir.
Guidance on expressing oneself artistically.
Rather than focusing on the basics of putting pencil (or whatever artistic instrument readers may prefer) to paper, comics illustrator Haidle pulls back and considers art not just as a physical exercise, but a mental one as well. She calls drawing “two-dimensional traveling”: “What you create…can be a place for you to inhabit…a feeling, a belonging.” She covers concepts such as patterns, linework, scale, and contrast (shown through tutorials), but also explores the idea of drawing as an intimate act that requires both mental clarity and physical dexterity. While her insights will enthrall the artistically minded, readers eager to start with something simpler will need to look elsewhere. Haidle’s pencil, ink, gouache, graphite, and digital collage illustrations, presented in grayscale with pops of color, are at times cluttered and marred by large scribbles of text in small font, resulting in an overwhelming visual experience. Useful exercises such as surrealist favorite the “exquisite corpse” game and using one’s nondominant hand to draw are relegated to the bottom of the page or the backmatter. With a few exceptions, such as Yayoi Kusama, Haidle generally doesn’t offer much information on the artists whose techniques she mentions. People depicted throughout vary in skin tone.
An esoteric look at the artistic process that preaches to the choir. (artistic exercises) (Nonfiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781774885031
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
For every dreaming girl (and boy) with a pencil in hand (or keyboard) and a story to share.
A multiaward–winning author recalls her childhood and the joy of becoming a writer.
Writing in free verse, Woodson starts with her 1963 birth in Ohio during the civil rights movement, when America is “a country caught / / between Black and White.” But while evoking names such as Malcolm, Martin, James, Rosa and Ruby, her story is also one of family: her father’s people in Ohio and her mother’s people in South Carolina. Moving south to live with her maternal grandmother, she is in a world of sweet peas and collards, getting her hair straightened and avoiding segregated stores with her grandmother. As the writer inside slowly grows, she listens to family stories and fills her days and evenings as a Jehovah’s Witness, activities that continue after a move to Brooklyn to reunite with her mother. The gift of a composition notebook, the experience of reading John Steptoe’s Stevieand Langston Hughes’ poetry, and seeing letters turn into words and words into thoughts all reinforce her conviction that “[W]ords are my brilliance.” Woodson cherishes her memories and shares them with a graceful lyricism; her lovingly wrought vignettes of country and city streets will linger long after the page is turned.
For every dreaming girl (and boy) with a pencil in hand (or keyboard) and a story to share. (Memoir/poetry. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-399-25251-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
With young readers diagnosed with anxiety in ever increasing numbers, this book offers a necessary mirror to many.
Young Raina is 9 when she throws up for the first time that she remembers, due to a stomach bug. Even a year later, when she is in fifth grade, she fears getting sick.
Raina begins having regular stomachaches that keep her home from school. She worries about sharing food with her friends and eating certain kinds of foods, afraid of getting sick or food poisoning. Raina’s mother enrolls her in therapy. At first Raina isn’t sure about seeing a therapist, but over time she develops healthy coping mechanisms to deal with her stress and anxiety. Her therapist helps her learn to ground herself and relax, and in turn she teaches her classmates for a school project. Amping up the green, wavy lines to evoke Raina’s nausea, Telgemeier brilliantly produces extremely accurate visual representations of stress and anxiety. Thought bubbles surround Raina in some panels, crowding her with anxious “what if”s, while in others her negative self-talk appears to be literally crushing her. Even as she copes with anxiety disorder and what is eventually diagnosed as mild irritable bowel syndrome, she experiences the typical stresses of school life, going from cheer to panic in the blink of an eye. Raina is white, and her classmates are diverse; one best friend is Korean American.
With young readers diagnosed with anxiety in ever increasing numbers, this book offers a necessary mirror to many. (Graphic memoir. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-545-85251-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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