Willy's Pictures

Title: Willy’s Pictures

Author: Anthony Browne

Illustrator: Anthony Browne

Picture book for ages (approximately) 7 and up

Rating: 4of 5 stars

Summary:

In this book Willy, a chimp, paints pictures which are tributes to masterpieces such as The Creation of Adam and the Mona Lisa. It won the Hans Christian Anderson Award.

Opinion:

This book is similar to the book Once Upon a Picture which I blogged about earlier. It shows sixteen different famous paintings through the eyes of Willy the chimp with a short commentary at the bottom of the page. The artwork is beautiful. You can stare at each page for hours analyzing each little detail. Often time you can find things within each picture such as, paint brushes or bananas. This book is a good example for children to see how they can create their own art and opinions about art. It shows them the thought process going through Browne’s head as he looks at a painting. What does he think about it? How can he recreate it in his own vision? It shows that you don’t just look at something and take it for what it is. You form an opinion and your own version which should be shared. I really like that. I think too many times people, myself included, take things at face value and don’t analyze them, or think about what they mean. People need to do that, we need to read between the lines and form individual opinions otherwise we are just parrots for someone else.

I would definitely use this book in my classroom, not only on my library shelf, but for all grades in genre studies and author studies as well. I just may be careful around certain classes I might have because in the back of this book are the real paintings, many of which include nudity such as The Creation of Adam and The Turkish Bath. They are small and you can’t see a whole lot of detail, but an immature class or student may get very hung up on that without taking anything else out of the lesson.