Review of Silent Days, Silent Dreams

Silent Days, Silent Dreams
by Allen Say; illus. by the author
Intermediate, Middle School    Levine/Scholastic    64 pp.
10/17    978-0-545-92761-1    $21.99

Born in 1899, James Castle was a deaf, self-taught artist in Idaho who created prodigiously — and privately, until a gallery “discovered” him in his middle age. Say imagines a biography for Castle (told from the perspective of a nephew), painting him as a mute, solitary, bullied child and man whose hermetic representations of the world around him were extraordinary. The illustrations, copious and paneled in a variety of sizes, range from Say’s characteristic fine-lined watercolors to naive-style drawings on notebook paper to cardboard assemblages (made by Say’s wife) to intimate and emotive portraits created with “soot and spit,” a favorite medium of Castle’s. Many of the pictures are imitations of Castle’s own work, and this can cause some confusion, as on a page where realistic pencil sketches of four children sit atop more abstracted, Castle-style, pencil drawings of the same subjects. But it’s all Say — as is the choice of subject matter, the artist who is at once removed from and highly attuned to his surroundings. Appended material provides more information about Castle, Say’s techniques, and a bibliography; much of Castle’s own work can be viewed at jamescastle.com.

From the January/February 2018 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.