Inspired by O'Keefe's letters, Kathryn Lasky imagines a day in the life of the artist. Ora Eithan provides illustrations that glow with her own vision of the artist's world. ( )

This book tells the story of a day in the life of Georgia O'Keeffe. It shows how she thinks of her ideas for her art work. The book shows that everyone has a certain way of doing what they love. This was a cute story about one of my favorite artists. I feel so much emotion in her art, and looking into what her days may have looked like was interesting to me. ( )

While this book does contain a biographical sketch of O'Keefe's life at the end, the real power of the book is the compelling examination of a single day in her life wherein Lasky portrays how O'Keefe percieves her surroundings searching out inspiration for her next painting. Though she took inspiration from the real world, the abstraction of her process was distinct and interesting. Lasky explains her motivators using exceptionally simple language, meaning that I wasn't lost in complication as I tried to see where O'Keefe was coming from. This was a well written piece of historical fiction intended to compress her O'Keefe's process into a single, understandable day with a biograhy thrown in at the end. I enjoyed it. ( )

Personal Review:

I thought this was a beautiful book. I live in New Mexico (although away for a bit of the summer) and the illustrations make me feel like I am home! I definitely think it is geared to a bit older kids (or adults!) as it is not riveting enought to grab the attention of very many younger kids. However, it describes Georgia O'Keeffe in a very simplistic way. I would like to learn more about her to see if the descriptions are true!

Classroom/Library Implications:

This book would be wonderful for an art unit. It would also be good for a New Mexico unit to understand the beauty of New Mexico and learn more about one of it's famous people. I think this would be a good book to put on display at a public library with other books about famous artists. ( )

A beautifully illustrated book that attempts to capture what O'Keefe saw when she painted, but doesn't succeed. Just comes across as too wordy and kind of weird.
Has a bibliography and quotes. ( )