Willy's Pictures - Softcover

Anthony Browne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1406313564 ISBN 13: 9781406313567

Publisher: Walker Childrens Paperbacks, 2008

Synopsis

Hugely entertaining and informative - this is a unique art history lesson given by internationally acclaimed children's book illustrator. Willy's pictures look like great works of art, but not quite...for Willy has added himself and his friends to famous paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Vermeer, Manet and many more. Delight in his dazzling portfolio then open the fold-out pages to see the original pictures and learn about the artists who painted them. As Willy knows, every picture tells a story...

About this title

About the Author:

Anthony Browne is one of the most popular and stylistically distinctive children's book artists with a number of outstanding titles to his credit. These include five books featuring Willy: Willy the Wimp, Willy the Champ, Willy and Hugh, Willy the Wizard and Willy the Dreamer, as well as Gorilla (Winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal and the Kurt Maschler Award); Changes; The Tunnel; I Like Books; Things I Like; Look What I've Got!; Piggybook; Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Winner of the Kurt Maschler Award); Hansel and Gretel; Zoo (Winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal) and King Kong (shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal). He won the illustration section of the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award for his services to children's literature. He lives with his family in Kent.

From Publishers Weekly:

Glimpsed imagining himself as a painter in Willy the Dreamer, Browne's versatile chimp now takes up the palette in perhaps his most intriguing outing yet. Willy presents his versions of 16-plus familiar masterpieces, working his own imageDand a sophisticated, quirky humorDinto each. Refashioning Winslow Homer's rather somber The Herring Net as "The Fruitful Fishing Trip," for instance, Willy adds splashes of color by changing the fishermen's catch to bananas; alongside the boat floats a pig, its neck encircled with this fruit. Pieter Brueghel the Elder's The Tower of Babel here becomes a sandcastle, with an overlaid image of Willy cast as the subject from William Blake's Glad Day. Observant readers will pick up on several recurring motifs, as well as elements from additional paintings: the desolate streetscape in Edward Hopper's Early Sunday Morning is brightened by flowers in a window (a diminutive reproduction of Vincent van Gogh's Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers), his friend Millie appears in another window, and Willy walks his "dog" (Buster Nose the gorilla on all fours) past a barber-shop pole in the multicolored pattern of the chimp's signature vest. On the penultimate spread, Browne sheds his mask to take readers on "a tour of the pictures that inspired Willy." A minor caveat: some of the reproductions of the original paintings in a concluding gatefold index are too small for youngsters to fully appreciate the contrast between the masters' and Willy's works. Regardless, "Willy's" enlightening captions beneath the original masterworks and a complete list of where the paintings can be viewed make this one-volume minimuseum well worth a visit. Ages 4-up.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Walker Childrens Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1406313564
• ISBN 13: 9781406313567
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 32