Norman Rockwell: Storyteller with a Brush

""[Rockwell's] great talent was that his paintings told stories without using a single word,"" writes Gherman (E.B. White: Some Writer!) in this anecdotal biography. Her well-chosen words join with crisp reproductions of his art to tell a heartening story of this devoted chronicler of American social history who paid tribute to ""average people doing average things""--among them: Rosie the Riveter taking a lunch break (1943), a boy heading off to college in Breaking Home Ties (1954) and African-American student Ruby Bridges going to an integrated school (1964). Sketching his childhood, Gherman explains that, unlike his athletic older brother, Rockwell was skinny and clumsy, but he drew effortlessly and knew ""that was what he wanted to do with his life."" At 15, he quit high school to enter art school and later attended the Art Students League in New York. The author offers edifying particulars about the mechanics of Rockwell's painting; especially skilled at drawing children, he for years insisted on working from live models and later realized the efficiency and advantages of painting from photographs. Including a number of his celebrated covers for the Saturday Evening Post, of which he produced 332 over almost 50 years, the volume validates a nickname Rockwell earned early on in his career: ""the kid with the camera eye."" Gherman brings Rockwell into sharp focus here. Ages 8-up. (Jan.)