If you’ve kept an eye on my blog posts over the months, you know I’m very interested in art books for children. Learning to look with an open mind is a crucial skill in developing real multicultural consciousness, and exposure to art can be great training for kids.
No One Saw (2002) was the first in Bob Raczka’s Adventures in Art series (8 books to date), published by Lerner Publishing. “No one saw flowers like Georgia O’Keeffe,” begins his beautiful exploration of how artists bring us vision through their work. Spare rhyming lines are illustrated by signature works of mostly impressionist-era art. “No one saw music like Marc Chagall. No one saw soup like Andy Warhol,” one double page goes, and indeed we never saw either the same way after those artists gave us their views. Short artist bios follow Raczka’s personal, tender concluding message: “Artists express their own point of view. And nobody sees the world like you.”
Bob Raczka’s endearing text and wise curatorship of the art works he presents make all his books classics. Art-loving parents will long be grateful for his skillful aid in embuing a love of art in their offspring. I’m a big fan of Raczka’s; click here for more posts about his books for kids.