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Caldecott Monday: Radiant Child
Mar. 13th, 2017 04:24 pmAt last the library got me a copy of the 2017 Caldecott Medal Winner! Javaka Steptoe's Radiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, a charming book about, well, what it says on the tin. The illustration style is unique & intriguing: Steptoe paints on boards, so each part of the picture is on its own board and they're all fitted together so you can see the joins between them, which I've never seen before in quite this way.
I also enjoyed getting to know a bit more about Basquiat, who I had heard of but only in passing. Although I was a bit puzzled by this bit in the author's note, where Steptoe is describing a painting that inspired Basquiat: "Some people think that Guernica shows the suffering people and animals when warplanes bombed the village of Guernica, Spain, during the Spanish Civil War."
Are there some people who don't think that? I thought this was universally acknowledged.
Radiant Child also won the 2017 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award, and while it's a nice book, I'm not sure it's "two of the most prestigious awards in children's literature" nice - and not just because it's so darn hard to fit both the Caldecott and Coretta Scott King stickers on the spine of the book when you're processing it for the library.
Well, maybe a lot because of that. I had to cover half the title. But it does seem like the awards committees might have conspired to share the award wealth a bit more.
I also enjoyed getting to know a bit more about Basquiat, who I had heard of but only in passing. Although I was a bit puzzled by this bit in the author's note, where Steptoe is describing a painting that inspired Basquiat: "Some people think that Guernica shows the suffering people and animals when warplanes bombed the village of Guernica, Spain, during the Spanish Civil War."
Are there some people who don't think that? I thought this was universally acknowledged.
Radiant Child also won the 2017 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award, and while it's a nice book, I'm not sure it's "two of the most prestigious awards in children's literature" nice - and not just because it's so darn hard to fit both the Caldecott and Coretta Scott King stickers on the spine of the book when you're processing it for the library.
Well, maybe a lot because of that. I had to cover half the title. But it does seem like the awards committees might have conspired to share the award wealth a bit more.
