A handsome volume to enchant a new generation of readers and artists.
How homemade quilts created in rural Alabama became modern art.
Descended from enslaved African-Americans on the Pettway Plantation, the women of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, have been making quilts for generations. Taught by grandmothers, mothers, and aunts, these women have made quilts from cotton and corduroy and even old men’s trousers, using bold colors and a variety of patterns. For the poor tenant farmers of Gee’s Bend, the quilts were functional, “something to cover up with” to keep warm in cold cabins and hung out on fences and clotheslines once a year to “air out.” Rubin effectively demonstrates the important role of collectors Bill and Matt Arnett in “discovering” the quilts and seeing them as visual art, “some of the best art in the country.” Soon, thanks to their efforts, the quilts were being shown in museums all over the United States and included in the collection of the Modern Museum of Art in New York City. Full-color photographs beautifully present the quilts, while numerous other color and black-and-white photographs portray the history of Gee’s Bend and its now-famous quilters. A thread of history runs through the narrative, too, weaving in slavery, the New Deal, and the civil rights movement. A section on “Making a Quilt Square” makes quilting accessible to young artists.
A handsome volume to enchant a new generation of readers and artists. (source notes, bibliography, acknowledgments, image credits) (Nonfiction. 8-14)Pub Date: June 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4197-2131-1
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious.
If you made a recording to be heard by the aliens who found the iPod, what would you record?
For 11-year-old Alex Petroski, it's easy. He records everything. He records the story of how he travels to New Mexico to a rocket festival with his dog, Carl Sagan, and his rocket. He records finding out that a man with the same name and birthday as his dead father has an address in Las Vegas. He records eating at Johnny Rockets for the first time with his new friends, who are giving him a ride to find his dead father (who might not be dead!), and losing Carl Sagan in the wilds of Las Vegas, and discovering he has a half sister. He even records his own awful accident. Cheng delivers a sweet, soulful debut novel with a brilliant, refreshing structure. His characters manage to come alive through the “transcript” of Alex’s iPod recording, an odd medium that sounds like it would be confusing but really works. Taking inspiration from the Voyager Golden Record released to space in 1977, Alex, who explains he has “light brown skin,” records all the important moments of a journey that takes him from a family of two to a family of plenty.
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-18637-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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