The team behind the Caldecott Honor book A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams once again creates a lyrical ode to an extraordinary man.
Carefully chosen details repeat in spoken and visual refrains that give shape to the life of Horace Pippin (1888-1946) and his dedication to recording his experiences through his artwork. Horace has "big hands" like his grandmother's, for instance, and he puts them to work doing chores, caring for his siblings and creating his artwork. Yet "the biggest part of you is inside, where no one can see," Grandma Pippin tells Horace.
Another refrain, "Make a picture for us, Horace!," highlights the support Horace received from family, schoolmates and, later, fellow workers and soldiers he fought alongside in World War I. Melissa Sweet's collage artwork depicts the many drawings that fill Horace's living room and his thoughts ("Pictures just come to my mind... and I tell my heart to go ahead," reads one of many quotations threaded into Jen Bryant's narrative). Red barbed wire in his drawings of the war front connects to a nighttime image of Horace getting shot in his drawing arm: "Now, when someone said, 'Make a picture for us, Horace!'... Horace could not." Author and artist demonstrate how deeply the war affected Horace, but also how his passion pushed him to find a way to paint again, to widespread acclaim.
Children will enjoy finding the "splash of red" on every page, and come to appreciate Horace Pippin's lifelong passion for drawing and painting. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness