By Susie Hodge and Illustrated by Kim Ekdahl
“At 90, I will enter into the secret of things.”
With a wannabe artist in the family, its not surprising that we try to do quite a bit of art history in our home education. So I was really chuffed when I came across “Hokusai – He saw the world in a wave” from the brilliant “What the Artist Saw” series. The series as a whole is a fab collaboration between publishers DK and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, so I just knew the book would be fantastic, and I was not disappointed!!! It’s absolutely beautiful, not to mention super educational!
The book was much longer than I expected, and very in depth – being a picture book, it implies it’s for primary or elementary aged kids, but my teens learnt loads from it as it’s so informative! (And I have to admit, there were things in there that I didn’t know, so I was learning too!) It follows his whole life, and goes into lots of detail about both his work and his family, which is brilliant as Hokusai had such a long and varied life, studied under lots of different masters and even had several different “official” names! There are suggestions scattered throughout the book for arty things to do – like copying things in nature, and drawing a scene of people at a carnival – which are probably more suited to primary aged children, but they certainly don’t detract from the book for older ones.
The illustrations are just gorgeous, and done in a very Hokusai-inspired way, so you get a real feel for his artwork, and for Japan in the time he lived! And of course there’s a fab double-page spread illustration of his most famous piece “Under the Wave off Kanagawa,” which is fantastic for helping kids recognise both the piece and his style in general. Plus, as with Hokusai’s work, there are lots of Mount Fujis scattered throughout the book, which the kids had great fun spotting!
The book is just brilliant for getting kids interested in art history in general, and for studying art history in a bit more depth – we’re all about learning being fun and relevant around here, and Hokusai – He saw the world in a wave certainly fits those criteria! We’ll definitely be looking out for more in the series!
Hokusai – He saw the world in a wave can be found at both Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com
DK kindly sent us our copy for the purposes of this review – thank you so much DK!
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A Different Way To Go 