Viva Frida
Yuyi Morales’s playful, lush, elegant, heartfelt picture book about artist Frida Kahlo concludes with an author’s note titled “My Frida Kahlo,” which begins: “When I think of Frida Kahlo, I think of orgullo, pride. Growing up in Mexico, I wanted to know more about this woman with her mustache and unibrow. Who was this artist who had unapologetically filled her paintings with old and new symbols of Mexican culture in order to tell her own story?” The note itself is an informative and loquacious conclusion to a work that is linguistically spare, visually complex, and emotionally rich and stirring. Morales’s illustrations combine photographs of three-dimensional tableaus she created featuring hand-crafted puppets representing factual elements of Kahlo’s life, including the child-friendly details of Kahlo’s pet deer and monkey, and paintings that reference Kahlo's own work, representing elements of her vivid creative life as expressed through her art. The bilingual text is a series of simple statements in Kahlo’s voice, which concludes, “I love / and create / and so / I live!” ©2014 Cooperative Children's Book Center
Illustrated by Tim O'Meara
CCBC Age Recommendation: Ages 4-9
Age Range:
PreK-Early Elementary (Ages 4-7)
Grades 3-5 (Ages 8-10)
Format:
Picture book
Subjects:
Art and Artists
Biography
Creativity
Mexicans and Mexican Americans
Diversity subject:
Latine
Physical Disability/Condition
Publisher:
Neal Porter Books
Publish Year: 2014
Pages: 40
ISBN: 9781596436039
CCBC Location: Non-Fiction, 759 Morales