The Two Fridas

"I must have been six years old when I formed an intense imaginary friendship with a girl... who was more or less my age." The artist Frida Kahlo's (1907-1954) charming first-person recollection of how she used to meet and play with an imaginary friend--a second Frida found behind a door drawn on a fogged-up window pane--offers a framework for Folì's artistry. In his pictures, the real world is finely detailed but pencil-gray, but Frida's imaginings burst with color, viridian leaves and pink roses, smiling parrots, and grinning skeletons bedecked in finery. The colors recur in the fantastical self-portraits shown in the adult Frida's studio, and in the folds of her folkloric skirt, images of brightness in a drab world. In the ever-expanding universe of Kahlo picture books, this stands out for its creative approach and fidelity to the artist's singularity. Includes a biography. Ages 5-8. (Mar.)

Gr 1-3--In her diary, renowned artist Frida Kahlo recalled dancing and sharing her problems with an imaginary twin she met as a child by diving through a door drawn in a foggy bedroom window. Using a translation of her short entry as inspiration, Italian artist Folì sends a skinny child from a drab everyday room into a wildly exuberant landscape of monkeys, skulls, and jagged bursts of color to be welcomed by a smiling figure composed of leaves and flowers--and then back to a gray world lit up by flashes of magical detail, culminating in a final view of the grown Kahlo in her studio, surrounded by unfinished self-portraits (including a partial glimpse of the titular painting). Despite an uncredited afterword that offers a quick biographical and critical overview, younger readers are more likely to find their interest in Kahlo's life and art kindled by Anthony Browne's Little Frida, which recasts the same autobiographical fragment into an emotionally richer, more contextualized experience. VERDICT Mysterious and evocative, but best considered as a showcase for Folì rather than for Kahlo.--John Peters, Children's Literature Consultant, New York