This book was very interesting to me because it talked about a girl who enjoyed drawing in the dirt with her feet and saw the world differently. She ended up learning how to make wire baskets and transitioned into making artwork out of wire. I would recommend this book to primary students as it has many colors and is a fairly easy book to read with not many big words. I enjoyed this book because I thought the illustrations were really interesting and liked how unique they were, as compared to other books I have seen.

This biography for grades K-3 covers Asawa's life from a family farm as a child in California, to the famous Black Mountain College where she studied with other pioneering artists such as Merce Cunningham and Buckminster Fuller, to the creation of her famous wire sculptures collected in major museums. All throughout are the ideas of using nature as inspiration and working with your hands. Asawa's children asked that Asawa's internment not be included; note in back goes into those dark details.
Need to combine this book with photos of Asawa's work; only one photo included.
Includes a step by step paper folding activity. ( )

This is a good basic short biography about Ruth Asawa. The information is interesting, both her biographical information and the parts about her art education at Black Mountain College. I appreciated how the narrative and art examples showed the importance of the natural world in her life and work. Ruth grew up in a farming family and I love her quote: “Sculpture is like farming. If you just keep at it, you can get a lot done.” My favorite quote by her is: “An artist is an ordinary person who can take ordinary things and make them special.”

The illustrations do capture the artist and her art.

I do wish there had been more photographs, especially of the art, but also of Ruth and the people and places in her life. The two pages at the end that have an Author’s Note, a More About Ruth Asawa section and a resources list have the only photo. It’s of Ruth and one of her sculptures. I’m incredibly glad that it’s included but I wanted even more. The very last two pages of the book shows step by step how to make a dragonfly with paper, glue, and scissors.

This book was approved by the family/Estate of the artist.

Ruth Asawa is a San Francisco institution. A cousin of mine, in my father’s generation, was friends with her. My cousin was also an artist, though not a professional, and I think one main reason this cousin (on my father’s side) and my mother were friends is they both appreciated art, and I first learned ot appreciate art via my mother and Asawa’s work via my cousin. I’ve always liked Ruth Asawa’s work and felt closer to it because of this connection so I was excited to find this book in one of my Book Riot emails. I’ve already read one Asawa art book and there are others. I’d like to read more and definitely want to see more of her sculptures.

3-1/2 stars. Might be a 4-1/2 if multiple photos of the art and the artist had been included.

I want to read more and might check out a book or two listed in the back, and more books too. ( )