ABCs of Art

August 1, 2019
From "Apple" to "Zebra," an alphabet of images drawn from museum paintings. In an exhibition that recalls similar, if less parochial, ABCs from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (My First ABC, 2009) and several other institutions, Hahn presents a Eurocentric selection of paintings or details to illustrate for each letter a common item or animal--all printed with reasonable clarity and captioned with identifying names, titles, and dates. She then proceeds to saddle each with an inane question ("What sounds do you think this cat is making?" "Where can you find ice?") and a clumsily written couplet that unnecessarily repeats the artist's name: "Flowers are plants that blossom and bloom. / Frédéric Bazille painted them filling up this room!" She also sometimes contradicts the visuals, claiming that the horses in a Franz Marc painting entitled "Two Horses, 1912" are ponies, apparently to populate the P page. Moreover, her "X" is an actual X-ray of a Jean-Honoré Fragonard, showing that the artist repainted his subject's face...interesting but not quite in keeping with the familiar subjects chosen for the other letters. Caregivers eager to expose their children to fine art have better choices than this. (Informational picture book. 3-5)

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January 24, 2020

PreS-Gr 1-In this early introduction to art, a letter of the alphabet begins a word that appears as or suggests a detail in a master painting. Each page features a letter-word pair, along with a painting that highlights the word and a rhyming couplet whose second line includes the name of the painter. Each painting is labeled with its title, artist, and year of creation. A question on each page either invites readers to examine the painting closely or to think critically. The paintings include works from artists including Leonardo da Vinci, Johannes Vermeer, and the major French impressionists and post-impressionists; most were produced between the 18th and the 20th centuries. Only one (a copy of an ancient Egyptian wall painting done by a female British archaeologist) represents non-Western, nonwhite culture; besides the former, only one woman's (Mary Cassatt) art appears. The rhymes are mostly clunky and don't scan or read well. Questions posed to readers sometimes miss the mark, as they don't always get at the most interesting or important details in the paintings. Moreover, contrary to accepted early-learning strategies, the targeted word on each page is presented in all caps. Strangely, in the back matter, where readers are informed of the paintings' locations around the world, the targeted words are correctly shown printed in the capital and lower-case letters. VERDICT Attractive but unessential. Recommended for larger public collections.-Carol Goldman, formerly at Queens Library, NY

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