Review by Booklist Review
How does abstract art work? Is a painting of wavy, curvy bubble shapes "soft" and a painting of cubical lines and angles "hard?" They certainly appear to be when paired side by side. The same could be said for an image of rolling blues and whites being "calm" when paired with a jumble of overlapping shapes and colors that are "excited." In this incredibly simple and thoughtfully crafted art book, Willems presents original ink and acrylic paintings of abstract art with a wide variety of shapes, forms, colors, and composition techniques in carefully selected pairs, each with a single question to the reader, asking what a painting represents in the context of the other. The result is as complex or simple as the reader would like to make it. One can compare Willems' clear, linear, bold squares to Mondrian, his loud and boisterous compositions to Kandinsky, and his abstractions to Klee, but it could also purely be a book that asks the age-old question, "How does art make you feel?" A work of great skill and artistry.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this high-concept, image-focused picture book, Caldecott Honoree Willems explores the fundamentals of so-called opposites and playfully interrogates nonfigurative images' associations. His tools are 18 high-contrast abstract paintings in acrylic and ink--one per spread but clearly paired--and a series of attendant yes-or-no questions. "Is this soft?" accompanies an image of curvilinear, interlocking shapes in black, blue, gray, red, and yellow; a page turn later, the question "Is this hard?" abuts a picture of the same colors arranged into a sharp-edged geometric pattern. Though early images seem to largely concur with their listed descriptors ("Is this dark?" appears beside a dim painting), some of the pairs--"intentional" vs. "accidental" and "broken" vs. "fixed," for example--are sure to raise philosophical questions about the terms' essential definitions. If expressions such as "mechanical" (the image resembles a circuit board) and "organic" (floating biomorphic shapes nod to Miro) may be a touch conceptual for the stated age range, readers aren't likely to mind. This subtle, mind-expanding volume takes a familiar format to new places while showing how creators and readers meet on a page. Ages up to 2. Agent: Marcia Wernick, Wernick & Pratt. (Oct.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An exploration of abstract art inspires readers to ask what exactly is an opposite, anyway? First, the elephant in the room: There are no elephants here, nor pigs nor pigeons, for that matter. Instead, readers find enticing acrylic-and-ink abstracts that would feel equally at home on an art museum's walls or a child's bedroom floor. What sets it apart as a concept book is Willem's insistence on questioning the criteria of opposites. Instead of declaring it so, he invites readers viewing a gently curved, colorfully blobby painting to ponder, "Is this soft?" Who made that decision anyway? Some compositions feel easy to interpret, such as a "calm" pale-blue, wavelike composition contrasting with an "excited" shape- and line-filled extravaganza. Bold additions of open-ended pairs, such as the circuit-filled "mechanical" and amoebalike "organic" pairing, seem purposefully designed to elicit rich conversation. None will accomplish that more than a poignant "inclusion" and "exclusion" set, with a grid of matte primary-colored rectangles juxtaposed with an empty white square with a singular, lonely black square in the corner. Only a barely painted teal square on the opening page which "is starting" and on a final page declared "finished" as a fully painted square are utterly definitive (both statements are the only ones that end with periods), reminding readers that everything else is up to them. Like the art itself, this book leaves space to see and contemplate. Is this for you? Absolutely. (Concept book. 4-10) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
