Library Find

     

We have really missed our library lately! We fell off our regular routine bandwagon a while ago but with the hot summer months coming, we are desperate to get back into the habit. Right now, all of us girls are on a Penderwicks kick. Sunshine is currently strolling with them down Gardam Street, Shortcake is just getting to know the four sisters, two bunnies and one very interesting boy and I have finished vacationing with them at Pointe Mouette.  This new third book is just as delightful as the others. I can't wait for them to read it!

I found this book by accident on the children's new acquisitions shelf and I just had to share it here. It's perfect for any child (or Mom) interested in art history (love it!) or even Dutch history. It called The Vermeer Interviews: Conversations with Seven Works of Art. Vermeer is one of my favorite artists. Seventeen years ago, I spent a week on my own traveling from Rome to Den Haag just to catch a glimpse of The Girl with the Pearl Earring as it was being restored. The author, Bob Raczka, has a wonderful understanding of the techniques of the man called The Painter of Light and helps the reader/viewer to study these works of art in a delightfully amusing way... by interviewing the subjects. The Professor read it and found it very interesting. He liked the way the author highlighted some details in the paintings that he might not have noticed on his own. If you get a chance to pick it up at your library, I highly recommend it! Oh and I'm delighted to discover that Mr. Raczka has written other books on art for children!

And I'd love to know what are your favorite art history or art study books for kids?

P.S. I have also read the purely speculative historical fiction novel about Vermeer called The Girl with a Pearl Earring and I did not care for it but that's just my opinion. I wish more people knew how little we actually know about his amazing painter and knew that this story is not based on fact. From the author herself:

Is Girl with a Pearl Earring a true story? To what extent is it based in fact?
It isn't a true story. No one knows who the girl is, or in fact who any of the people in his paintings are. Very little is known about Vermeer—he left no writings, not even any drawings, just 35 paintings. The few known facts are based on legal documents—his baptism, his marriage, the births of his children, his will. I was careful to be true to the known facts; for instance, he married Catharina Bolnes and they had eleven surviving children. Other facts are not so clear-cut and I had to make choices: he may or may not have lived in the house of his mother-in-law (I decided he did); he converted to Catholicism at the time of his marriage but not necessarily because Catharina was Catholic (I decided he did); he may have been friends with the scientist Antony van Leeuwenhoek, who invented the microscope (I decided he was). But there was a lot I simply made up.