Sculpture for Kids
What I like about art is how it comes into your consciousness sideways while you’re thinking about something else. Bob Raczka’s recent alphabet picture book, 3-D ABC: A Sculptural Alphabet, (search at Lerner Publishing) is quirky in exactly this way. His minimal text never refers directly to the letters the images supposedly illustrate. The letters K and L, for example, are represented in a 2-page spread of Brancusi’s “The Kiss” and Robert Indiana’s “Love.” The text reads simply “Sometimes, two completely different sculptures… can say exactly the same thing.” The cover art, Rauschenberg’s Spoonbridge and Cherry at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, is a captivating image for any kid. (“I want to go there,” I overheard a preschooler at the library say to his mom, pointing to the cover photo.)
3-D ABC introduces images of significant 20th century sculpture by artists from Giocometti and Picasso to Jeff Koons, installed from Munich to New York to Tokyo (links are to images of works in the book). Raczka gives kids a solid sense of the range of sculptural materials, scale and subject matter. With delightful juxtaposition of images and respectfully fine reproduction quality, 3-D ABC introduces young readers to shapes that are iconic across cultures, ideas that make the world very small in a very good way.
January 24th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
What a fabulous-sounding book! I love ABC books for the surprises they so often offer within the structured presentation of the alphabet – but this one is a new one on me and definitely needs investigating!
January 26th, 2008 at 9:39 am
What an interesting way to teach children to take another look at the world around them. I’ll be passing this along to our elementary school art teacher. It just might help her engage her students in a new way to make connections
January 29th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Lorraine is my fellow teacher who passed your blog on to me. Yes! This is a fabulous way to engage students! It is always fun to have different approaches. My students are so visual that using books to tweak their interests is a surefire way to captivate them and launch their imaginations.
January 29th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Glad you found the post useful, Bess. (Bess teaches at a private school for kids with learning disabilities.) Bob Raczka has a special gift in presenting art to kids, I think. You can search the blog for other posts of his books, with more coming in the future. Check our website, too, for reviews of other picture books that might spark your visually-oriented students, and the child in all of us who need our visual literacy developed and stimulated…