Runaway Girl: The Artist Louise Bourgeois - Hardcover

Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan have collaborated on best-selling, critically acclaimed books about Chuck Close, Frank O. Gehry, and Vincent van Gogh. Jan Greenberg is also the author of Abrams' Heart to Heart: New Poems Inspired by Twentieth-Century American Art, a Michael L. Printz Honor Book. She lives in St. Louis. Sandra Jordan, an editor and photographer as well as a writer, lives in New York City.

*Starred Review* Gr. 8-12. As in Frank O. Gehry, Outside In (2000), the authors once again make challenging art accessible and exciting to teen readers. This time they focus on Louise Bourgeois, one of the best-known living sculptors, whose work deals with primal themes of jealousy, betrayal, and shifting sexual identities, which, according to Bourgeois are inspired by her painful childhood and her adulterous father. In clear, elegant prose, bolstered with numerous quotes from the artist, the authors seamlessly juxtapose stories of Bourgeois' life with relevant artworks, which are often explained in the artist's own words. Beautifully reproduced photographs, printed on well-designed pages, offer an excellent mix of the artist's personal life and her art, though the authors remind readers that "we don't have to know her story to have our own strong reaction," to her work. By showing the relationship among shapes, colors, materials, and emotions, the authors invite readers to approach even the most bewildering art with confidence and think about it in their own words. The book concludes with a glossary, a bibliography, and notes. Gillian Engberg
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