And I Paint It: Henriette Wyeth’s World

A girl and her father, artists both, head out on a summer day to paint. Her poetic narration pulls the reader along, rendering in words what she experiences (“His big hand is red-and-blue-and-purple freckled,/ his old coat smells like apple cores and packing moss and turpentine”) as well as her father’s lessons in “sensing deeply” (“ ‘Love the object for its own sake, Henriette,’ Pa says,/ only to me,/ pointing to the flower,/ fine and lucky on its stem”). Kephart’s afterword explains that the child protagonist is Henriette Wyeth (1907–1997), a noted artist and the daughter of illustrator N.C. Wyeth (1882–1945). Kephart’s evocative text pairs dreamily with Bates’s illustrations of fully realized, painterly images of Henriette and her father at work, collected artist notebook–style alongside small, finely rendered pencil sketches of items such as a scratching hen and a blackberry vine. A lovely foray into a painter’s world. Ages 5–7. [em](May) [/em]