Review - If Picasso Painted a Snowman

If Picasso Painted a Snowman
by Amy Newbold
illustrated by Greg Newbold
Date: 2017
Publisher: Tilbury House Publishers
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book non-fiction
Pages: 36
Format: e-book
Source: library

A big, brightly colored, playful introduction to various important painters and art movements.

If someone asked you to paint a snowman, you would probably start with three white circles stacked one upon another. Then you would add black dots for eyes, an orange triangle for a nose, and a black dotted smile. But if Picasso painted a snowman…

From that simple premise flows this delightful, whimsical, educational picture book that shows how the artist’s imagination can summon magic from a prosaic subject. Greg Newbold’s chameleon-like artistry shows us Roy Lichtenstein’s snow hero saving the day, Georgia O’Keefe’s snowman blooming in the desert, Claude Monet’s snowmen among haystacks, Grant Wood’s American Gothic snowman, Jackson Pollock’s snowman in ten thousand splats, Salvador Dali’s snowmen dripping like melty cheese, and snowmen as they might have been rendered by J. M. W. Turner, Gustav Klimt, Paul Klee, Marc Chagall, Georges Seurat, Pablita Velarde, Piet Mondrian, Sonia Delaunay, Jacob Lawrence, and Vincent van Gogh. Our guide for this tour is a lively hamster who—also chameleon-like—sports a Dali mustache on one spread, a Van Gogh ear bandage on the next.

“What would your snowman look like?” the book asks, and then offers a page with a picture frame for a child to fill in. Backmatter thumbnail biographies of the artists complete this highly original tour of the creative imagination that will delight adults as well as children.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

This is a fun little book that teaches a bit about famous artists while imagining how they would've drawn a snowman. The reader is guided through this journey by (for some reason) a fat little hamster.

Plenty of artists are represented here. I enjoyed seeing how each one might have drawn a snowman. By using this one object as the inspiration, the book clearly shows how each style of art looks.

The mini biographical sketches at the back help elevate this book even more. There were a few artists I hadn't heard of, but even the more familiar ones were presented with some new information that I hadn't previously known.

This would be a great book for kids who are interested in art, but it would work just as well as a basic picture book. It's fun to see a snowman interpreted in so many ways.

Quotable moment:

Premise: 4/5
Meter: n/a
Writing: 3/5
Illustrations: 4/5
Originality: 4/5

Enjoyment: 4/5

Overall: 3.83 out of 5