Review by Booklist Review
Encouraged by his artist grandfather, a young boy growing up in Detroit finds inspiration when he collects discarded refuse and reimagines it as art. Tyree Guyton sees raw materials when the other children on Heidelberg Street see garbage, and he uses those materials to forge beauty from next to nothing. As a teen, Tyree moves away, but after returning to Detroit as an adult, he converts Heidelberg Street into a public art installation, polka-dotting abandoned houses, suspending shoes from tree limbs, and decorating telephone poles with broken dolls. In telling this true story, Shapiro punctuates her zippy, buoyant narrative with rhyming refrains distinguished by larger, looping typography. Brantley-Newton references Guyton's found-object installations with her own warm, mixed-media collages, embellishing her hand-drawn figures and evocative settings with photographic scraps of buttons and bears, toasters and trains. This engaging picture-book biography delights as an affectionate portrait of a transformative artist and inspires as a call to find and make beauty wherever we are.--Barthelmess, Thom Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
When Tyree Guyton was a child in Detroit, he learned to reuse items that others threw away, which became a passion for transforming trash into art. After witnessing his neighborhood split apart by rioting, serving as a soldier, and enrolling in art school, Guyton returns to dilapidated Heidelberg Street. Shapiro richly describes the activism behind much of Guyton's work: "When trouble still sizzled in one discarded home, Tyree coated it in dots and squares of pink, blue, yellow, and purple, then perched a magenta watchdog on the porch." Brantley-Newton's vivid compositions, which incorporate paint, newsprint, and photo-collage, honor an artist who created the world he wanted to live in. Ages 6-9. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 2-5-Guyton grew up poor on Detroit's East Side. After stints in the military, in the auto industry, and as a firefighter, he attended art school. Returning home, he found his neighborhood dotted with vacant houses, full of trash, and infested with "troublemakers." Vowing to do something to save it, he and his grandfather began painting rubbish in bright colors; painting bold, primitive faces on windows; and decorating the trees. Although the city government sought to destroy this uncommissioned community art, the neighbors rallied, and it was allowed to stand. Eventually, many houses on the street were painted with large, cheerful dots, and the neighborhood became internationally known. Replete with vivid action words, onomatopoeia, and singsong rhythmic interludes, the text creates a sense of urgency and exhilaration. However, it is the artwork that is the truly outstanding element of this book. Brantley-Newton captures the exuberant nature of Guyton's work while incorporating his use of dots and circles, cast-off objects, and painterly brushstrokes. Glowing pigments appear rubbed into canvas surfaces to create backgrounds for the cartoonlike yet sensitive drawings of Guyton, his family, and his neighbors. Crayon drawings, gouache highlights, and charming collage tidbits ensure that each page is full of life.-Paula Willey, Baltimore County Public Library, Towson, MD (c) Copyright 2011. 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
Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
