In Mary’s Garden by Tina Kügler (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: In Mary’s Garden by Tina Kügler Jeannette Hulick Kügler, Tina In Mary’s Garden; written and illus. by Tina and Carson Kügler. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015 [32p] ISBN 978-0-544-27220-0 $16.99 Reviewed from galleys R 5-8 yrs Even as a child, Mary Nohl likes making things with her hands; as she grows older, her love of art and art-making evolve as she transforms the grounds of her Lake Michigan home into an informal outdoor sculpture gallery, filling it with creations made from cement mixed with beach sand and studded with a variety of found objects. Her dogs offer loyalty and moral support as Nohl constructs her “creatures” from things washed ashore, and “Mary always had room for one more stone, one more shell, and one more friend.” This is an appealing and kid-friendly introduction to Nohl’s art, and creative kids (and collectors of natural objects) will respond to her impulse to make things out of the stuff she had at hand. Though this presentation of her life and her art is pared down and simplified for its young audience, an author’s note does provide more information about Nohl, including the controversy her art caused both during her life (she was derided and her art vandalized) and afterwards (some lakeside neighbors deplored the increased tourist [End Page 500] traffic). More photos of her actual artwork (only two small ones are included in the end note) would have been appreciated, but the Küglers’ softly angular mixed media art (which includes traditional watercolor, digital painting, collage, and vintage papers) does a credible job of capturing the friendly and slightly abstracted sensibility of Mary’s folk art creations. This could be paired with Ashley Bryan’s Puppets (BCCB 10/14) for a closer look at making three-dimensional figures from beach detritus or Slaymaker’s Bottle Houses (BCCB 5/04) to expand the look at folk artists, or it could be used as a springboard to making smaller-scale creations out of found objects. Copyright © 2015 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois