Review by Booklist Review
Award-winning author-illustrator Yang (Stop! Bot!, 2019) renders this imagined biography of Japanese American Isamu Noguchi with the utmost tenderness. While young readers may not be familiar with Noguchi's sculpture, some will be able to relate to his keen eye and astute curiosity about the world around him. Yang invites us to connect, positing, "If you were a boy named Isamu . . . ," and then leads us to notice the details of his surroundings. Leaving the bustle of the marketplace, Isamu retreats into himself and wanders away, thinking about the textures, colors, and forms of objects in the natural world around him. The text and illustrations are almost as spare as Noguchi's modernist sculpture, but rather than celebrate the success of the adult artist, this focuses on the quiet, cerebral, sentient qualities of the little boy who viewed the world as a gift. This lyrical biography will resonate with creative types of all ages and can easily be incorporated into a curriculum as a springboard for writing, research, and art projects. Can be paired thematically with Kyo Maclear and Julie Morstad's It Began with a Page (2019) and Barb Rosenstock and Claire A. Nivola's The Secret Kingdom (2018).
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Miniature, toy-like images by Geisel Medalist Yang (Stop! Bot!) follow a solitary boy who's drawn to nature's elemental forms. He's based on the sculptor Isamu Noguchi (1904--1988), but readers needn't have that context to take pleasure in this story. In a second-person telling that places readers right in the moment, Isamu is at the market in Japan with his mother, off at the edge of the action: "Maybe there is a quiet space that feels more like you," the text reads. Wandering beyond a group of children who play loudly, Isamu walks, asking questions: "Why does cloth feel soft? Who made the path with stone?... How can light feel so welcoming?" In the forest, he sees leaves, grass, and more stones ("If you are Isamu, stones are the most special of all"), then finds his way to the quiet rumble of the ocean. "Isamu! There you are!" his mother cries, reaching for an embrace--when she asks about his day, "You think about how you were/ alone but not lonely." Less a biography than an attentive, balanced study of an artist's sensibility, this story ends with an author's note about Noguchi, who believed that "when an artist stopped being a child, he would stop being an artist." Ages 3--7. (June)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 1--3--Yang's award-winning printed book pubbed two years ago, but it undoubtedly offers timeless resonance and inspiration for the youngest generation of would-be artists. Yang reveals in his ending author's note, "[Isamu] Noguchi has always been a hero of mine." Repeating the refrain, "If you are Isamu," Yang imagines the artist's childhood explorations of his immediate world. Renowned and revered for his sculptures of stone and wood, in this empathetic portrayal Isamu eschews crowded places and loud playmates to experience colors, textures, nature, and environments on his own. VERDICT Actor/filmmaker Hanami--whose mixed-race Japanese/white ancestry reflects Noguchi's own heritage--provides an unhurried, crisp narration perfect for a read-along. "Alone time can be the most special time of all," Yang reminds, and Hanami underscores--a valuable antidote, indeed, to the constant overstimulation too many children face today.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
"If you are a boy named Isamu," begins this invented vignette of the childhood of artist Isamu Noguchi, "at the market with your mother, it can be a crowded and noisy place." The text continues in second person, inviting readers to imagine themselves in the place of this quiet boy in early-twentieth-century Japan. The story follows him as he wanders away from the market, through a forest, and onto a beach. As he walks, he wonders about the shapes and textures of rocks, leaves, and bamboo. He imagines faces for the rocks, thinks about how wind carries the grass he tosses away, and wonders about paper lanterns, "how light can feel so welcoming." All these objects will become artistic material for the adult Noguchi as he creates landscape art and paper sculptures. Yang's text meets child readers on their own level, framing the natural world as a source of curiosity and delight. His digital illustrations feel warm and organic. Edges are softened and shapes are emphasized, as the pictorial lens zooms in and out to focus on a leaf or portray the grand scale of a seaside cliff. The book works as both an introduction to a fascinating artist and a tribute to the quiet joys of the natural world. An appended note provides more information about Noguchi's career and the author's inspiration for this picture book: "This story is how I imagine Isamu Noguchi explored nature, because as some children know, alone time can be the most special time of all." K Rachael Stein September/October 2021 p.87(c) Copyright 2021. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
If you were a boy named Isamu…what would you learn about your world? Beginning with the whimsical jacket design that's echoed in the shapes, colors, and prose that follow, readers are encouraged to experience finding their own voices in quiet spaces. Isamu, a young boy with beige skin and black hair, feels overwhelmed in the crowded and noisy market--a patchwork of stalls, merchandise, and people. Instead he seeks out colorful paper lanterns, a still wood where leaves crunch, a field of grass, a rocky beach, and more. Using the second person, the narrator invites readers to imagine themselves as Isamu, asking his questions and immersing himself in the natural world using his senses. Whimsy is woven throughout, appearing even in a large gray stone with a face that is echoed on the dust jacket. Colorful lines of all forms dominate the design of the spreads--straight bamboo stalks, rounded stones that look like birds, a wavy outline in rock that frames the sea--all carefully rendered in bold colors balanced by plenty of white space. Yang depicts Isamu in proportion with his wonder at the world, by turns prominent and peripheral. The author's note explains how Isamu Noguchi's biracial background (his father was Japanese and his mother was a White American) led to ostracization in both Japan and the United States, prompting him to seek out safe, natural spaces that eventually inspired his artwork, based in stone and wood. (This book was reviewed digitally.) A marvel of prose, illustration, and design that invites repeated meditation. (Picture book. 4-8) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
