Have you ever wondered what your favorite artists might have been like as kids?  Ever imagine what Dr. Seuss was like before he was Dr. Seuss?  Can you imagine Andy Warhol as a child, perhaps sharing a bowl of Cambell’s soup with him at lunch?   These stories come to life in Kid Artists: True Tales of Childhood from Creative Legends by David Stabler and art by Doogie Horner (Quirk Books, 2016).

We love art in this house, we spend quite a bit of time creating it.  However, what we rarely have the opportunity to do is to read biographies about artists when they were kids.  We go to lots of museums in our town and when we travel and revel in the stunning beauty that so many artists create.  Kid Artists speaks to the origin stories of some of the worlds most famous and most talented artists.

What you will find when you open this incredibly humorous book is three parts that will completely amazing and enthrall you as you learn more about these incredible Kid Artists.

Part One: It’s a Hard-Knock Life: shyness, poverty, discrimination, and .  ar.  In this part you will learn all about Louise Nevelson, Dr. Seuss, Jackson Pollock, Charles Shultz, Yoko Ono and Jean-Michel Basquiat

Part Two: Practice Makes Perfect: If you want to be a successful artist, you’ll need to paint a lot of canvases  Part two gives us childhood insights into Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Jacob Lawrence, Andy Warhol and Keith Haring

Part Three: Call of the Wild: secret caves, creepy-crawlies, and animals galore.  Part three is where you will discover more about Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent van Gogh, Beatrix Potter, Emily Carr and Georgia O’Keeffe

Image from Kid Artists – Beatrix Potter

The stories shared within the pages of this book are so interesting, so well told.  One of my daughters favorite chapters was about Dr. Seuss.  We are rather obsessed with him these days and his silly way with words – she literally squealed when she saw the tiny image of the Lorax.  So reading about him as a child completely entranced her, she couldn’t believe he was allowed to draw on the walls and immediately wanted to know if she was allowed to express her creativity in that way.

Images from Kid Artists – Dr. Seuss

These stories teach us lessons about the artists and their life, but more so how they were real people who struggled with their own challenges. I love that these books show us strong example of perseverance, endurance, aspiration and  what being passionate looks like.

Image from Kid Artists – Claude Monet

This series is absolutely amazing, I would highly recommend Kid Artists, this would be a fantastic book for art teachers to share with their students as well as for parents to share with their children.  This book is geared towards ages 9-12 for independent reading.  However, I have been reading it aloud to my 6 year old and she absolutely loves these stories.  Kid Artists will be released on August 9th, so mark your calendars, you will want to share this book with your petites for sure.

Bloggers Note: This book was given to me by Quirk Books in exchange for an honest review, all thoughts and opinions about this amazing book are my own.  A huge thank you to Quirk Books for the use of the images from Kid Artists.