Frida Kahlo: Discover the Artist Behind the Masterpieces (Portrait of an Artist)

by Lucy Brownridge (Author) Sandra Dieckmann (Illustrator)

Reading Level: 2nd − 3rd Grade

A beautifully told art story for children, looking at Frida Kahlo's life through her masterpieces. Accompanied by stunning original illustrations from the award winning Sandra Dieckmann. 

Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter and today is one of the world's favourite artists. As a child, she was badly affected by polio, and later suffered a terrible accident that left her disabled and in pain. Shortly after this accident, Kahlo took up painting, and through her surreal, symbolic self portraits described the pain she suffered, as well as the treatment of women, and her sadness at not being able to have a child.

This book tells the story of Frida Kahlo's life through her own artworks, and shows how she came to create some of the most famous paintings in the world. Learn about her difficult childhood, her love affair with fellow painter Diego Rivera, and the lasting impact her surreal work had on the history of art in this book that brings her life to work.

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School Library Journal

PreS-Gr 2-Tailoring her texts to very young readers, Brownridge glosses over Frida Kahlo's physical and marital difficulties and the seriousness of Vincent van Gogh's mental illness and suicide. "Vincent decided that he had had enough of being unwell.... When he died, he could hear the gently rustling corn that had given him so much joy and inspiration." Placing photos of the artworks along with the text on each spread allows the illustrators to be inspired by the style without having to copy it and gives readers a solid idea of the artists' work. These works don't always appear chronologically. The first Kahlo painting shown is What the Water Gave Me (1938), implying it was done early in life rather than well into her career. The back matter offers more information about each image; there are picture credits but no sources, even for direct quotes. Carron's playful, colored pencil illustrations lighten van Gogh's story further. Dieckmann's images, "created with digital and traditional media," capture the surreal effect of many of Kahlo's paintings. Both Carron and Dieckmann have done justice to the artists. VERDICT These gently told narratives are shallow but effective for the audience.-Kathleen Isaacs, Children's Literature Specialist, Pasadena, MD

Copyright 2019 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Publishers Weekly

Brownridge's gloss on Kahlo's dazzling vision and life covers the usual points associated with the artist in straightforward language: "Frida liked to paint lots of outfits or versions of herself in the same picture. She did this to show what it was to feel like lots of different people, all rolled into one body." Combined with Dieckmann's colorful pictures, full of sweet-faced characters and stylized flowers, the resulting biography has the effect of obscuring what's essential about the artist: her rich, fierce, insistent originality. Kahlo's own complicated, seductive, and often troubling paintings, inset in small format as part of the larger illustrations, reveal a fundamental mismatch between her idiosyncratic symbology and this book's simplified approach, which explains magic realism as "objects from real life but with a big sprinkle of Frida's special magic!" Ages 5-7. (Sept.)

Copyright 2019 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.

Review quotes

"A thoughtful and colorful biography of one of Mexico's most prolific artists." -Kirkus Reviews - Kirkus Reviews
Lucy Brownridge

Lucy Brownridge is an author and editor of children's books based in London. She writes books for children about history of art, history, animals, and science. She has an MA in history of art from the Courtauld Institute of Art and a BA in history of art from the University of Bristol.

Sandra Dieckmann is an artist, illustrator and potter from the UK. She is best known for her colorful, patterned and intricate drawings of nature and wildlife. In 2011 Sandra was chosen by Oscar-winning animator & illustrator Shaun Tan as the Emerging Talent in Illustration for her image 'Fox Tree'.

Classification
Non-fiction
ISBN-13
9781786036421
Lexile Measure
-
Guided Reading Level
-
Publisher
Wide Eyed Editions
Publication date
September 20, 2019
Series
Portrait of an Artist
BISAC categories
JNF007010 - Juvenile Nonfiction | Biography & Autobiography | Art
JNF006040 - Juvenile Nonfiction | Art | History
JNF007120 - Juvenile Nonfiction | Biography & Autobiography | Women
JNF038070 - Juvenile Nonfiction | People & Places | Mexico
Library of Congress categories
Biographies
Kahlo, Frida
Painters
Mexico
Women painters

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