A History of Pictures for Children - a review

A History of Pictures for Children: From Cave Paintings to Computer Drawings
By David Hockney and Martin Gayford
Illustrated by Rose Blake
Abrams, 2018

In A History of Pictures, art critic Martin Gayford teams up with artist David Hockney to deliver an enlightening and entertaining discourse on art.  The Introduction explains the book's format.  It is an illustrated discussion between the artist and the art critic, each offering commentary on what he knows best.  Gayford offers a more scholarly look at the history of an artistic period or work of art—the what and when, while Hockney offers an artists' perspective on the same—the why and the how.

Their conversations are accompanied by photos of actual  art pieces, and cartoon illustrations by Rose Blake. Blake's playful illustrations add a lightness to the book and advance the conversation, showing simple explanations of concepts like depth and perspective, as well as explanations of early artistic tools like 16th century pinhole projectors, 18th century silhouette machines, and 19th century zoetropes. The authors and the illustrator appear in cartoon format throughout the book. The topics of each chapter are listed below.

Engaging and educational, A History of Pictures for Children should be in every school and public library.  The suggested age range is 10-14 however, it will likely appeal to older kids with artistic interests as well.  I would go so far as to suggest that adults will find it interesting also.  I found it thoroughly engaging and thought-provoking and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Well done!

 

Chapters:
Thinking About Pictures: Why do we make pictures?
Making Marks: What makes an interesting mark?
Light and Shadows: What is a shadow exactly?
Watch this Space: How do artists set the scene?
Mirrors and Reflections: How do artists play with light?
Painting and Photography: What tools do artists use?
Moving Pictures: Can pictures really move?
The Story Goes On: What's next for pictures?

Back matter includes an illustrated Timeline of Inventions, Glossary, Bibliography, List of Illustrations, and Index

Extreme Wildfire - an interview with Mark Thiessen

Fire Prevention Week is October 9 - 15

Teachers and safety educators can find free resources and downloads at the National Fire Protection Association website. 

Today I am pleased to offer a brief interview with Mark Thiessen, 

photographer and author of  Extreme Wildfire, published by National Geographic Kids, 2016.

Extreme Wildfire is a holistic view of wildfires—including scientific, historical, personal, tactical, and ecological aspects—and of course, there are the fantastic photos.

Photo by Mark Thiessen  © National Geographic

LT: Considering the danger and importance of fighting wildfires, I'm shocked that the training period for wildland firefighters is only five days!  Did you really feel prepared after only five days of training?

MT: You might call the five days of training “survival training”. It's basically everything you need to know so you won’t get yourself killed. Don’t try to outrun a fire going up hill, or always know where your escape route is and your safety zone. It’s 4 days of classroom instruction followed by practicing to deploy your fire shelter, and finally a practice fire. But certainly not enough to know how to fight a wildfire. That is learned on the job. Only a few rookies are added to a crew every year and they train with them leading up to fire season. It’s a great honor and they only accept the best of the best. The first task is fire training to get your “red card”.
The first time a rookie experiences the drudgery of digging line is when they work their first practice fire. To contain a wildfire you need to remove the vegetation along the fires perimeter down to mineral soil, a path about 2 ft wide. This is hard, back breaking work and even harder until you learn the technique. I will never forget a young, gung-ho rookie as we dug fire line on our practice fire. He was thoroughly exhausted after only 30 minutes of digging line. On the ride back to town he sat silent, he had that “50 ft. stare in a 10 ft. room” look about him. I knew what he was thinking, “What have it got myself into? How can I dig line all day, all summer long, when I can’t even do it for 30 minutes?”

LT: There are few people I know who would not want to be a National Geographic photographer.  On the other hand, knowing many firefighters, I can also understand that you've been "bit by the fire bug."  You've been very fortunate to combine two of your great interests.  If all things were equal financially, and you had to choose between photographer and firefighter, which would you choose?

MT: For many reasons, I would still like to do what I’m doing now, which is a photographer telling the story of fire. First you have the fire which moves like its alive and at times it's very beautiful. Next you have the firefighters who love the outdoors, love adventure and I want to show what it's like from the inside. Finally you have the issues of people moving into natural areas where fire has been the dominant player since the last ice age. It's not an matter of if wildfire is going to hit an area but when.  Not to mention firefighting is very hard work.

LT: You wrote of having flame retardant dropped on you from a plane. What special measures do you take to protect your equipment?

MT: It’s extremely dry and dusty out west during fire season. I’m afraid there isn’t much I can do to protect my equipment other than wipe it down at the end of the day and try to blow the dust off of it. The biggest problem is getting dust on my camera sensor when I change lenses. I can avoid this problem by having a camera body attached to each lens so I never have to change lenses. But no matter how hard I try, I still end up with dust inside my lenses.

LT: The goal of any writer, artist, or photographer is to evoke emotion.  What feeling do strive to create in your photos? Without a firefighter in the frame, how do you capture emotion?

MT: Fire is as beautiful as it is terrifying. And when you can anticipate the situation and get there when it’s going to happen, you just can’t take enough pictures of it. You end up in these other-wordly places. You’re in the middle of a forest with trees burning all around you – and it’s just magical. All of my favorite pictures all have this other-worldly feel to them. I hope to get into those situations where the light is doing things that it doesn’t normally do. I’m always drawn to photographing things where the light source is in the picture. So fire at night is a great opportunity for that.

LT: This final question was posed by my husband,  a veteran of as crusty a bunch of North Jersey firefighters as you're likely to meet! 😉When you are working as a photographer with a firefighting crew, do they accept you "into the fold?"  Do you share in the camaraderie?

 MT: Because I have been doing this for so long, I’ve developed a good reputation among firefighters. Yet I’m always working with crews for the first time. They can be a little “standoff-ish” at first. But after my first day with them, I call it “getting to know me day”, they see how I carry my self around fire and I earn their respect. After a week we are good friends, exchanging emails and becoming friends on Facebook. I also follow through on my promise to send them photos of themselves fighting fire.

LT: My thanks to Mark Thiessen, his publicist, and publisher!

From the National Geographic Store website:

Mark Thiessen has been a photographer with National Geographic since 1990. He is widely published in all areas of the National Geographic Society, including National Geographic magazine, National Geographic Adventure, and National Geographic Traveler. National Geographic books that feature Thiessen's work include Return to Midway, which documents the discovery of the U.S.S Yorktown, and Baseball as America, a look at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Note:

My copy of Extreme Wildfire was provided by the author's publicist 

Orangutans are Ticklish

Welcome to Shelf-employed! I'm the host of this week's Nonfiction Monday.

Grubman, Steve and Jill Davis. 2010. Orangutans are Ticklish: Fun facts from an animal photographer. New York: Schwartz & Wade.(Random House)


Not your typical animal book, Orangutans are Ticklish combines stunning animal photos with animal facts, and a peek behind the scenes at an animal photo shoot.  These guys and gals are no super models!  Take the hipppo for instance,

This girl ate a hundred pounds of veggies during the thirty-minute photo shoot.

No wonder her mouth is wide open, but

a hippo's yawn doesn't mean she's tired. It means she wants to fight.

Thirteen animals including the lion, kangaroo and aardvark are featured.  Each creature has a two-page spread with large text, a beautiful photo, and a text bubble with interesting insight from photographer Steve Grubman. A "More Fun Facts" section contains three bulleted facts on each animal.  Kids will love this book for the photography.  Though it's too long for storytime reading, the photos and one or two facts could easily be shared with a storytime group.
Nonfiction fun!


Bloggers, please add your links below. Readers, please be sure to visit all of today's Nonfiction Monday contributors.  Thanks!







A few sites don't appear to be linked.  They are:
Janet's post on Alphabet City at All About the Books with Janet Squires
The Book Nosher's baseball themed post
Apples with Many Seeds offers In the Neighborhood, Over the Fence, Right Next Door
Bookends contributed Lincoln Tells a Joke by Kathleen Krull and Paul Brewer.
I'll continue to add any other posts that didn't get linked.

The Seer of Shadows

Avi. 2008. The seer of shadows. New York: Harper Collins.

The prolific Avi has a winner in Seer of Shadows, historical fiction with a decidedly eerie and menacing twist. Horace Carpetine, raised to believe in science and rationalism, has been apprenticed to a photographer in post-Civil War, New York City. When his unscrupulous employer decides to perpetrate a hoax on a grieving mother, a tangled tale of death, deception, abuse and the supernatural "develops," literally, on the glass plates of the photographer's camera.

Horace befriends Pegg, a black servant girl from the deceased's household, and together they confront the inconceivable. The Seer of Shadows is a gripping tale with a strong historical base and the supernatural eeriness of Gaiman's Coraline.