15 Favorite Children's Books about Male Artists

Walter Anderson's Trees (Watercolor, from here)

Bass, Hester. (2009). The Secret World of Walter Anderson. Illustrated by E.B. Lewis. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press.
(Artist: Walter Anderson,1903-1965 ) Learn more about Walter Anderson here.

Edward Hopper's Night Windows, 1928.

Burleigh, Robert. (2014). Edward Hopper Paints His World. Illustrated by Wendell Minor. New York: Atheneum.
(Artist: Edward Hopper,1882-1967)

George Bellows's Cliff Dwellers, 1913)

Burleigh, Robert. (2012). George Bellows: Painter with a Punch! New York: Abrams Books for Young Readers.
(Artist: George Bellows, 1882-1925)

Jacob Lawrence's The Seamstress (gauche on paper), 1946

Duggleby, John. (1998). Story Painter: The Life of Jacob Lawrence. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books.
(Artist: Jacob Lawrence, 1917-2000)

Page Spread of Jackson Pollock from 1949 Life magazine.

Jackson Pollock's Summertime, Number 9A

Greenberg, Jan and Sandra Jordan. (2007). Action Jackson. Illustrated by Robert Andrew Parker. New York: Square Fish.
(Artist: Jackson Pollock,1912-1956)

Isamu Noguchi's Red Cube, 1968 (Located at 140 Broadway, Manhattan)

Hale, Christy.(2012).  The East-West House: Noguchi's Childhood in Japan. New York: Lee & Low Books.
(Artist: Isamu Noguchi, 1904-1988)

Romare Bearden's Empress of the Blues, 1974

Harvey, Jeanne Walker. (2011). My Hands Sing the Blues: Romare Bearden's Childhood Journey. Illustrated by Elizabeth Zunon. Tarrytown, NY: Two Lions.
(Artist: Romare Bearden, 1911-1968)

Pottery by Dave Drake

Hill, Laban Carrick. (2010). Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave. Illustrated by Bryan Collier. New York: Little, Brown.
(Artist: Dave Drake, about 1801-1870) 

Rene Magritte's The Human Condition, 1933

Johnson, D.B. (2012). Magritte's Marvelous Hats. New York: HMH Books for Young Readers.
(Artist: Rene Magritte,1898-1967)

Diego Rivera's The Uprising, 1931

Marín, Guadalupe Rivera. 2009. My Papa Diego and Me/Mi papa Diego y yo: Memories of My Father and His Art/Recuerdos de mi padre y su arte. New York: Lee & Low Books.
(Artist: Diego Rivera, 1886-1957)

Bil Traylor's Untitled (Man, Woman), 1940-1942  Watercolor on graphite and cardboard

Tate, Don. (2012). It Jes' Happened: When Bill Traylor Started to Draw. Illustrated by R. Gregory Christie. New York: Lee & Low Books.
(Artist: Bill Traylor, 1854-1949)

Josef Alber's Homage to the Square, 1965

Wing, Natasha. (2009). An Eye for Color: The Story of Josef Albers. Illustrated by Julia Breckenreid. New York: Henry Holt. 
(Artist: Josef Albers, 1888-1967)

Henri Matisse's Harmony in Red, 1908

Winter, Jeanette. (2013).  Henri's Scissors. New York: Beach Lane Books.
(Artist: Henri Matisse, 1869-1954)

Pablo Picasso's The Old Guitarist, 1903

Winter, Jonah. (2012). Just Behave, Pablo Picasso! Illustrated by Kevin Hawkes. New York: Arthur A. Levine Books.
(Artist: Pablo Picasso,1881-19730

Simon Rodia's Towers

Zelver, Patricia.  (2005). The Wonderful Towers of Watts. Illustrated by Frane Lessac. Honesdale, PA:  Boyds Mills Press .
(Artist: Simon Rodia,1879-1965)

Recent African American and Caribbean Books for Children

Picture Books

Beaty, Daniel. (2013). Knock Knock: My Dad's Dream for Me. Illustrated by Bryan Collier. New York: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.

Cline-Ransome, Lesa. (2014). Benny Goodman and Teddy Wilson: Taking the Stage As the First Black-and-white Jazz Band in History. Illustrated by James E. Ransome. New York: Holiday House.

Dempsey, Kristy. (2014). A Dance Like Starlight: One Ballerina’s Dream. Illustrated by Floyd Cooper. New York: Philomel.

Engle, Margarita. (2014). Tiny Rabbit's Big Wish. Illustrated by David Walker. New York: Houghton Mifflin. (Afro-Cuban folktale).

Johnson, Angela. (2014). All Different Now: Juneteenth, the First Day of Freedom. Illustrated by E.B. Lewis. New York:  Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.

Powell, Patricia Hruby. (2014). Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker. Illustrated by Christian Robinson. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books.

Rogé. (2014). Haiti My Country: Poems by Haitian Schoolchildren. Markham, ON: Fifth House.

Shabazz, Ilyasah. (2014). Malcolm Little: The Boy Who Grew Up to Become Malcolm X. Illustrated by AG Ford. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers.

Skead, Rob. (2013). Something to Prove: The Great Satchel Paige Vs. Rookie Joe DiMaggio. Illustrated byFloyd Cooper. Minneapolis, MN: Carolrhoda Picture Books.

Woodson, Jacqueline. (2013). This Is the Rope: A Story From the Great Migration. Illustrated by James Ransome. New York: Nancy Paulsen Books.

Novels in Verse

Burg, Ann E. (2013). Serafina'a Promise. New York: Scholastic.

Engle, Margarita. (2014). Silver People: Voices from the Panama Canal. New York: HMH Books for Young Readers.

Grimes, Nikki. (2013). Words with Wings. Honesdale, PA: WordSong.

Novels/Historical Fiction 

Edinger, Monica. (2013). Africa Is My Home: A Child of the Amistad.  Illustrated by Robert Byrd. Sommerville, MA: Candlewick Press. (True account)

Lamana, Julie T. (2014). Upside Down in the Middle of Nowhere. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books.

Rhodes, Jewell Parker.  (2013). Sugar. New York: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Nonfiction 

Gill, Joel Christian. (2014). Strange Fruit, Volume I: Uncelebrated Narratives from Black History. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing.

Rubin, Susan Goldman. (2014). Freedom Summer: The 1964 Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi. New York: Holiday House.

Trying for Fire

Morse Code (Philadelphia, PA. M.A. Reilly, 2010)

Trying for Fire




         By Tim Seibles



Right now, even if a muscular woman wanted
to teach me the power of her skin
I'd probably just stand here with my hands
jammed in my pockets. Tonight
I'm feeling weak as water, watching the wind
bandage the moon. That's how it is tonight:
sky like tar, thin gauzy clouds,
a couple lame stars. A car rips by —
the driver's cigarette pinwheels past
the dog I saw hit this afternoon.
One second he was trotting along
with his wet nose tasting the air,
next thing I know he's off the curb,
a car swerves and, bam, it's over. For an instant,
he didn't seem to understand he was dying —
he lifted his head as if he might still reach
the dark-green trash bags half-open
on the other side of the street.

I wish someone could tell me
how to live in the city. My friends
just shake their heads and shrug. I
can't go to church — I'm embarrassed by things
preachers say we should believe.
I would talk to my wife, but she's worried
about the house. Whenever she listens
she hears the shingles giving in
to the rain. If I read the paper
I start believing some stranger
has got my name in his pocket —
on a matchbook next to his knife.

When I was twelve I'd take out the trash —
the garage would open like some ogre's cave
while just above my head the Monday Night Movie
stepped out of the television, and my parents
leaned back in their chairs. I can still hear
my father's voice coming through the floor,
"Boy, make sure you don't make a mess down there."
I remember the red-brick caterpillar of row houses
on Belfield Avenue and, not much higher than the rooftops,
the moon, soft and pale as a nun's thigh.

I had a plan back then--my feet were made
for football: each toe had the heart
of a different animal, so I ran
ten ways at once. I knew I'd play pro,
and live with my best friend, and
when Vanessa let us pull up her sweater
those deep-brown balloony mounds made me believe
in a world where eventually you could touch
whatever you didn't understand.

If I was afraid of anything it was
my bedroom when my parents made me
turn out the light: that knocking noise
that kept coming from the walls,
the shadow shapes by the bookshelf,
the feeling that something was always there
just waiting for me to close my eyes.
But only sleep would get me, and I'd
wake up running for my bike, my life
jingling like a little bell on the breeze.
I understood so little that I
understood it all, and I still know
what it meant to be one of the boys
who had never kissed a girl.

I never did play pro football.
I never got to do my mad-horse,
mountain goat, happy-wolf dance
for the blaring fans in the Astro Dome.
I never snagged a one-hander over the middle
against Green Bay and stole my snaky way
down the sideline for the game-breaking six.

And now, the city is crouched like a mugger
behind me — right outside, in the alley behind my door,
a man stabbed this guy for his wallet, and sometimes
I see this four-year-old with his face all bruised,
his father holding his hand like a vise. When I
turn on the radio the music is just like the news.
So, what should I do — close my eyes and hope
whatever's out there will just let me sleep?
I won't sleep tonight. I'll stay near my TV
and watch the police get everybody.

Across the street a woman is letting
her phone ring. I see her in the kitchen
stirring something on the stove. Farther off
a small dog chips the quiet with his bark.
Above me the moon looks like a nickel
in a murky little creek. This
is the same moon that saw me twelve,
without a single bill to pay, zinging
soup can tops into the dark — I called them
flying saucers. This is the same
white light that touched dinosaurs, that
found the first people trying for fire.

It must have been very good, that moment
when wood smoke turned to flickering, when
they believed night was broken
once and for all — I wonder what almost-words
were spoken. I wonder how long
before that first flame went out.

A Baker's Dozen: 13 Favorite Children's Books about Women Artists & Their Images

Emily Carr, The Red Cedar, 1933, Oil (from here)

Deboh, Nicolas. (2007).  Four Pictures by Emily Carr. Toronto, ON: Groundwood Books. 
(Artist Emily Carr, 1871-1945) 

María Hernández de la Cruz & Casimiro de la Cruz López's Huichol folk art. (from here)

Endredy, James. (2003). The Journey of Tunuri and the Blue Deer: A Huichol Indian Story. Illustrated by María Hernández de la Cruz & Casimiro de la Cruz López. Rochester, VT: Bear Cub Books.
(Artists: The Huichol folk art is yarn painting. You can learn more about it here.)

Illustration by Maria Merian in 1705.  (from here)

Engle, Margarita. (2010). Summer Birds: The Butterflies of Maria Merian. Illustrated by Julie Paschkis. New York: Henry Holt and Co.
(Artist: Maria Merian, 1647-1717)

Michele Wood's self portrait, 2013 (from here)

Igus, Toyomi.(2004). Going Back Home: An Artist Returns to the South. Illustrated by Michele Wood. New York: Lee & Low. 
(Artist: Michele Wood) 

Quilt made by women from Gee's Bend, AL. (from here).

McKissack, Pat. (2008). Stitchin' and Pullin' A Gee's Bend Quilt. Illustrated by Cozbi A. Cabrera. New York:Random House Books for Young Readers.
(Artists: Women from Gees Bend, AL who make quilts)

Mora, Pat. (2002). Maria Paints the Hills. Illustrated by María Hesch. Albuquerque, NM: Museum of New Mexico Press.
(Artist: Maria Hesch, 1909-1994)

Grandma Moses's Sugaring Off, 1943 (from here)

Nikola-Lisa, W. (2000). The Year with Grandma Moses. Illustrated by Grandma Moses. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
(Artist: Grandma Moses, 1860-1961)

Georgia O'Keeffe's Blue and Green Music, 1921 ( from here)

Rodriguez, Rachel Victoria. (2006). Through Georgia's Eyes. Illustrated by Julie Paschkis. New York: Henry Holt & Co. 
Artist (Georgia O'Keeffe, 1887-1986)

Tomie Arai's Portrait/Young Women, 1998 (from here)

Rohmer, Harriet (Ed.). (1997). Just Like Me: Stories and Self-Portraits by Fourteen Artists. New York: Lee & Low.
(Artists: Tomie Arai, Carmen Lomas Garza, Michele Wood)

Sculpture, Gamin by Augusta Savage from here.

Schroeder, Alan. (2009).  In Her Hands: The Story of Sculptor Augusta Savage. Illustrated by JaeMe Bereal. New York: Lee & Low
(Artist: Augusta Savage, 1892-1962)

Emily Carr's Tree Trunk, 1931 (from here)

Vande Griek, Susan. (2002).  Art Room. Illustrated by Pascal Milelli. Toronto, ON: Groundwood Books. 
(Artist: Emily Carr, 1871-1945))

Georgia O'Keeffe's Music Pink and Blue, 1918 (from here)

Winter, Jeanette. (2003). My Name Is Georgia: A Portrait by Jeanette Winter. New York: HMH Books for Young Readers.
Artist (Georgia O'Keeffe, 1887-1986)

Frida Kahlo's  Autorretrato con Collar de Espinas y Colibrí
 (Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Humming-bird) (from here)

Winter, Jonah.(2002). Frida. Illustrated by Ana Juan. New York: Arthur A. Levine Books.
(Artist: Frida Kahlo, 1907-1954).

Shrinking Women

Voyeur (M.A. Reilly, 2010)

Shrinking Women

     - Lily Myers

Across from me at the kitchen table, my mother smiles over red wine that she drinks out of a measuring glass.
She says she doesn't deprive herself,
but I've learned to find nuance in every movement of her fork.
In every crinkle in her brow as she offers me the uneaten pieces on her plate.
I've realized she only eats dinner when I suggest it.
I wonder what she does when I'm not there to do so.

Maybe this is why my house feels bigger each time I return; it's proportional.
As she shrinks the space around her seems increasingly vast.
She wanes while my father waxes. His stomach has grown round with wine, late nights, oysters, poetry. A new girlfriend who was overweight as a teenager, but my dad reports that now she's "crazy about fruit."

It was the same with his parents;
as my grandmother became frail and angular her husband swelled to red round cheeks, round stomach,
and I wonder if my lineage is one of women shrinking,
making space for the entrance of men into their lives,
not knowing how to fill it back up once they leave.

I have been taught accommodation.
My brother never thinks before he speaks.
I have been taught to filter.
"How can anyone have a relationship to food?" he asks, laughing,as I eat the black bean soup I chose for its lack of carbs.
I want to say: we come from difference, Jonas,
you have been taught to grow out,
I have been taught to grow in.
You learned from our father how to emit, how to produce, to roll each thought off your tongue with confidence, you used to lose your voice every other week from shouting so much.
I learned to absorb.
I took lessons from our mother in creating space around myself.
I learned to read the knots in her forehead while the guys went out for oysters,
and I never meant to replicate her, but
spend enough time sitting across from someone and you pick up their habits-

that's why women in my family have been shrinking for decades.
We all learned it from each other, the way each generation taught the next how to knit,
weaving silence in between the threads
which I can still feel as I walk through this ever-growing house,
skin itching,
picking up all the habits my mother has unwittingly dropped like bits of crumpled paper from her pocket on her countless trips from bedroom to kitchen to bedroom again.
Nights I hear her creep down to eat plain yogurt in the dark, a fugitive stealing calories to which she does not feel entitled.
Deciding how many bites is too many.
How much space she deserves to occupy.

Watching the struggle I either mimic or hate her,
And I don't want to do either anymore,
but the burden of this house has followed me across the country.
I asked five questions in genetics class today and all of them started with the word "sorry."
I don't know the requirements for the sociology major because I spent the entire meeting deciding whether or not I could have another piece of pizza,
a circular obsession I never wanted, but
inheritance is accidental,
still staring at me with wine-soaked lips from across the kitchen table.

Forgiveness

Heal Camden (M.A. Reilly, Camden NJ, 2012)

FORGIVENESS

Molly Peacock
From:   Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems. W.W. Norton / Penguin Canada, 2002.

Forgiveness is not an abstraction for
it needs a body to feel its relief.
Knees, shoulders, spine are required to adore
the lightness of a burden removed. Grief,
like a journey over water completed,
slides its keel in the packed sand reef.
Forgiveness is contact with the belief
that your only life must now be lived. Knees
once sank into the leather of the pew with all
the weight of created hell, of whom you did not ease,
or what you did not seize. Now the shortfall
that crippled your posture finds sudden peace
in the muscular, physical brightness
of a day alive: the felt lightness
of existence self-created, forgiveness.