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Overview
Cuando su madre la deja a cargo de sus cinco hermanas, su padre la ensena a utilizar los pinceles y a colorear. Cuando una enfermedad la hace guardar cama durante meses, Frida dibuja para no aburrise. Cuando un accidente en autobus la sume en el dolor, Frida expresa su tristeza y depresion en sus pinturas. Una y otra vez, durante toda su vida, Frida Kahlo utiliza el arte para expresar sus sentimientos. Jonah Winter y Ana Juan se asoman a la vida y la obra de esta gran pintora para ofrecerle un hermoso tributo con este maravilloso libro.
Synopsis
When her mother was worn out from caring for her five sisters, her father gave her lessons in brushwork and color. When polio kept her bedridden for nine months, drawing saved her from boredom. When a bus accident left her in unimaginable agony, her paintings expressed her pain and depression - and eventually, her joys and her loves. Over and over again, Frida Kahlo turned the challenges of her life into art. Now Jonah Winter and Ana Juan have drawn on both the art and the life to create a playful, insightful tribute to one of the twentieth century's most influential artists. Viva Frida!
Publishers Weekly
Winter, who brought the Mexican muralist vividly to life in Diego, focuses on Diego Rivera's bride, Frida Kahlo an accomplished artist in her own right in this striking picture book-biography. With a spare narrative more akin to poetry than prose, the author touches on important events in his subject's childhood Frida's loneliness and the polio that kept her bedridden for months, as well as a bus accident, at age 18, that nearly killed her. He then shows how, each time, art helped her to transcend her injuries ("She turns her pain into something beautiful") and to unleash her magically surreal vision of the world in paintings ("In museums, people still look at them and weep and sigh and smile"). Juan, a Spanish fine artist and New Yorker cover artist making her children's book debut, creates artwork bursting with saturated color and infused with Mexican folk art motifs that also influenced Frida's own style. Floating figures, fantastical creatures and celestial bodies with human features cavort across the pages. Ana transforms Frida herself from a solemn, moon-faced child with uncompromising eyebrows (her well-known physical trait) to a woman whose gaunt features hint at both strength and inner struggle. One particularly breathtaking image shows the artist floating against a night sky, eyes closed and arms crossed on her chest in a death pose, held in the grip of a tree's thorny, gnarled branches ("Her body will hurt, always"). An outstanding introduction to an influential artist. Ages 4-10. (Feb.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Editorials
From the Publisher
Praise for DIEGO (1991):"An accessible picture book about the life and work of Diego Rivera sounds like an oxymoron, but Winter . . . succeed[s] beyond belief. . . . The last pictures show him as a young man, perched on his scaffolding, brushes in hand, beckoning viewers on with his ardent glance. Readers will wish they could follow."
-- School Library Journal
"An excellent beginning biography."
-- Kirkus
* One of The Ruminator Review's 100 Best Children's Books of the Twentieth Century
* A Reading Rainbow Review book
* A 1991 Parents' Choice Award Honor winner
Praise for FAIR BALL! (1997):
Certain to be a hit with kids who take baseball history seriously, Winter's . . . handsome volume devotes a spread each to 14 stars of the Negro Leagues. Balancing stats with engaging trivia and anecdotes, the author will open readers' eyes to the injustices of segregated baseball. . . . This picture book [will] help set some records straight.
-- Publishers Weekly
A good, highly accessible introduction to a group of athletes who deserve to be as well known as their white counterparts.
-- School Library Journal
Publishers Weekly
Winter, who brought the Mexican muralist vividly to life in Diego, focuses on Diego Rivera's bride, Frida Kahlo an accomplished artist in her own right in this striking picture book-biography. With a spare narrative more akin to poetry than prose, the author touches on important events in his subject's childhood Frida's loneliness and the polio that kept her bedridden for months, as well as a bus accident, at age 18, that nearly killed her. He then shows how, each time, art helped her to transcend her injuries ("She turns her pain into something beautiful") and to unleash her magically surreal vision of the world in paintings ("In museums, people still look at them and weep and sigh and smile"). Juan, a Spanish fine artist and New Yorker cover artist making her children's book debut, creates artwork bursting with saturated color and infused with Mexican folk art motifs that also influenced Frida's own style. Floating figures, fantastical creatures and celestial bodies with human features cavort across the pages. Ana transforms Frida herself from a solemn, moon-faced child with uncompromising eyebrows (her well-known physical trait) to a woman whose gaunt features hint at both strength and inner struggle. One particularly breathtaking image shows the artist floating against a night sky, eyes closed and arms crossed on her chest in a death pose, held in the grip of a tree's thorny, gnarled branches ("Her body will hurt, always"). An outstanding introduction to an influential artist. Ages 4-10. (Feb.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.Publishers Weekly -
Winter, who brought the Mexican muralist vividly to life in Diego, focuses on Diego Rivera's bride, Frida Kahlo an accomplished artist in her own right in this striking picture book-biography. With a spare narrative more akin to poetry than prose, the author touches on important events in his subject's childhood Frida's loneliness and the polio that kept her bedridden for months, as well as a bus accident, at age 18, that nearly killed her. He then shows how, each time, art helped her to transcend her injuries ("She turns her pain into something beautiful") and to unleash her magically surreal vision of the world in paintings ("In museums, people still look at them and weep and sigh and smile"). Juan, a Spanish fine artist and New Yorker cover artist making her children's book debut, creates artwork bursting with saturated color and infused with Mexican folk art motifs that also influenced Frida's own style. Floating figures, fantastical creatures and celestial bodies with human features cavort across the pages. Ana transforms Frida herself from a solemn, moon-faced child with uncompromising eyebrows (her well-known physical trait) to a woman whose gaunt features hint at both strength and inner struggle. One particularly breathtaking image shows the artist floating against a night sky, eyes closed and arms crossed on her chest in a death pose, held in the grip of a tree's thorny, gnarled branches ("Her body will hurt, always"). An outstanding introduction to an influential artist. Ages 4-10. (Feb.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.Criticas
K-Gr 4-This wonderfully conceived early biography of artist Frida Kahlo is a feast for the eyes. Winter's succinct and straightforward narrative aptly describes the subject's childhood and the origins of her artistic nature. Juan borrows from the artist's own technique, using many of Kahlo's symbols in her illustrations, such as monkeys, skeletons, and jaguars. Juan has created whimsical, colorful characters to portray Frida's own fertile imagination. At times the drawings become very dramatic and convey Kahlo's inner strength and willpower. Mlawer's translation of Winter's straightforward, lyrical narrative is flawless, accurately conveying not only the content but the feel of the English original. Author and illustrator notes are included. An essential purchase for school and public libraries.—Maria Mena, LeRoy Collins Leon Cty. P.L., Tallahassee, FL Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.