Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The duo responsible for the Georgia O'Keefe picture-book biography Through Georgia's Eyes (2006) turn their attention to another great modernist, the Catalonian architect Antoni Gaudí. The immediacy of the present-tense narrative is simple, direct, and at times piercingly poetic: With wide eyes, he observes the world. / All around him is light, form, and / the Great Book of Nature. / He will read from it all his life. Rodriguez punctuates the personal side of Gaudí's life with a few telling details before letting his creations buildings that sparkle and glitter / and whisper with joy capture the spotlight, maintaining a through-line of the artist deflecting his share of clamor and criticism. While it's certainly difficult to capture on the page the intricacies of size and space and spectacle that combine to create architecture's appeal, Gaudí's creations offer a unique opportunity to emphasize the abstract over the physical. To this end, Paschkis doesn't try to reproduce the delicate exoticism of Gaudi's buildings in a line-for-line manner but rather soaks up the wondrous strange oozing from his designs and renders their dreamlike qualities in pointed details and large-scale impressions. Adorning the pages are flourishes in handsome greens and browns, seamlessly linking nature to imagination to design. On one level, the result is a book that uses the artist's timeless works to construct a sprawling but coherent illustration of the creative process. On another, it is simply pure joy to look at.--Chipman, Ian Copyright 2009 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The team behind Through Georgia's Eyes pays homage to another singular artist. Often framed by art nouveau embellishments, striking visuals in warm browns and greens show off GaudI's work-his organic architectural designs, fantastical ornamental pieces and shapely mosaic structures. RodrIguez's gently poetic text follows GaudI's growth from a boy who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis as he observed his Catalonian world ("All around him is light, form, and/ the Great Book of Nature./ He will read from it all his life"), through his evolution as an increasingly bold artist. An enchanting introduction. Ages 5-8. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 3-6-Gaudi was born in Spain in 1852. He rejected the popular Gothic style and embraced the modern curves of Art Nouveau. Short sentences tell of the architect's boyhood in Catalonia, his love of nature, and his early influences and inspiration. Gouache illustrations playfully re-create Casa Batllo, Casa Mila, and other structures. "For Gaudi, building is serious./Everything must function./But he isn't afraid to use/his imagination." He incorporated nature inside and outside his creations. A list of Web sites direct readers to photographs of Gaudi's works. An accessible introduction to a man who was inspired by the natural world to create some highly original buildings.-Lisa Glasscock, Columbine Public Library, Littleton, CO (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Swarms of visitors each year descend upon Catalan architect Antoni Gaud"'s weird, wonderful church, La Sagrada Familia, under construction in Barcelona since 1883. Here, Rodr"guez highlights the daring architect's early love of nature and how that passion for organic forms was reflected throughout his career. The staccato, determinedly active-voice sentences range from clunky to lyrical, flowing best when describing architectural features: "At Casa Batll, / a fireplace hides under a mushroom cap. / Hallways look like underwater caverns. / The house sparkles like the sea." Paschkis captures the crazy curves and elaborate detail of Gaud"'s buildingsif not their context, scale and powerwith her flat, folk-artstyle gouache paintings and harvest palette, while graceful Art Nouveau borders harmoniously link art and text. Gaud"'s engineering feats, such as the underground chapel Colonia Crypt, are confusingly presented, and referencing Gaud"'s creations sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in English (La Sagrada Familia is named only as "Holy Family Church," for example) is a puzzling choice. Still, there's plenty here to have young aesthetes hankering for a plane ticket to Spain. (author's note, websites, selected bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 5-9) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
