Just Behave, Pablo Picasso! (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Just Behave, Pablo Picasso! Deborah Stevenson Winter, Jonah . Just Behave, Pablo Picasso!; illus. by Kevin Hawkes. Levine/Scholastic, 2012. [48p]. ISBN 978-0-545-13291-6 $18.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 3-5. Arguably the most towering figure of twentieth-century art, Pablo Picasso started out as a prodigious young painter in love with change and novelty, and Winter's picture book chronicles the way the artist's fearless originality shocked the art world. As the text explains, "In the time it takes other people to admire the exquisite beauty of his art, young Pablo has moved on to some other style," leaving in [End Page 486] his wake frustrated buyers, agents, and critics who just want him to make more of the same successful paintings rather than developing new style after new style. This isn't so much a biography of Picasso as a look at an iconoclast at work, and a spirited one at that; Winter's present-tense prose, emphasizing quick, heartfelt dialogue, has an urgency that conveys the intensity of the young and artistic, and the portrait of the artist as a young rule-breaker will immediately put audiences on his side. Appropriately enough, the art packs the main punch here: Hawkes' usual heartiness becomes deliberate audacity (especially on the title page, where young Picasso's face fills the spread, staring out intently at the viewer), counterbalanced with some more painterly styles in the sweeping acrylic brushstrokes. Illustrations respond smartly to the text's imagery, providing visual metaphors for the drama of Picasso's life and celebrating artistic freedom with the soaring shifts in perspective. Yet the art leaves the abstraction to Picasso himself, tracing his creativity accessibly and including takes on specific, identifiable Picasso paintings (their titles and locations are noted on the book's last page). Kids—and adults—who ask "What's the big deal about Picasso?" will find the answer here in a nutshell, and this would make a terrific partner to other modernist art picture books such as Winter's Gertrude Is Gertrude Is Gertrude Is Gertrude (BCCB 1/09). A final note gives a little more detail on Picasso's life. Copyright © 2012 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois