The Art Room

Winner of the Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Illustrator's Award Emily Carr (1871-1945) was a great artist of the Northwest Coast. One of the few woman painters of her generation, she has been exhibited with and compared to Georgia O'Keeffe and Frida Kahlo, two other women artists whose work is finally receiving the recognition it deserves. The Art Roomis set in the early 1900s, when Carr was teaching art to children to support herself. Susan Vande Griek has created a delightful story-poem filled with Carr's love of animals, her insistence on painting from life and nature, and the sense of fun and freedom that she inspired in her students. Pascal Milelli has brilliantly accomplished the very difficult job of painting a book about a painter. His rich, painterly style is a perfect foil for the work that Carr was doing at the time.