The Art Room

I love using this book to help writers create sensory images in their writing and I've also used it during a study of inferring.  The Art Room is a tribute to Emily Carr, a Canadian artist (think Van Gogh and O'Keeffe).  I was first struck by the beauty of the illustrations, but then I read it and was awestruke by the poetic story.  It's a first person account of a group of children who take art lessons from Miss Carr in the upstairs of an office building.  Lines like "...pinks and purples spilled from window boxes and lept from walls..." and "...typewriters talking business and tongues babbling news..." fill the text.  The students in 1900 "giggled and gulped and gabbed with Miss Carr about people, and animals and art," and this book paints a wonderful portrait of learning, both for the students in the text and for the students in my classroom.  The book is not new, but it one worth having in your collection.  It would also make a wonderful gift for the art teacher in your school... it's written by Susan Vande Griek and illustrated by Pascal Milelli.