Illustrating a biography of an artist is its own challenge. In The People's Painter: How Ben Shahn Fought for Justice with Art — a picture-book biography of artist Ben Shahn, written by Cynthia Levinson — illustrator Evan Turk strikes a balance between allowing Shahn’s influence to infuse the illustrations (his intention, as he states in his illustrator’s note) and making them his own. Created with gouache, acrylic, pencil, chalk, and linoleum block prints, with masking tape “to make the crisp lines and shapes,” the illustrations are full of visual interest, with mottled backgrounds, varied textures, bold and contrasting colors, and outlines superimposed on other images. They include some depictions of specific works of art, but even the portrayals of Shahn’s black-and-white photographs are very obviously painted, with visible brushstrokes. (For more on the particular considerations involved in illustrating an artist’s biography, I refer you to Lolly Robinson’s post on Javaka Steptoe’s Radiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, which won the 2017 Caldecott Medal.) 

Turk does something different with composition and perspective on nearly every spread. In one image, young “enraged” Ben (who would often sketch in the margins of his book of Bible stories) is larger than everyone around him, including the teacher whose collective punishment he is protesting. A few spreads later, Ben is seen protesting again, but this time he’s up against a sentry representing the czar, and you can tell from his size that he’s not feeling as powerful. A wordless spread clearly delineates the distinct stages of his journey from Lithuania to America — ship, Ellis Island, reunited family. Turn the page, and intersecting scenes give a sense of how many new things are bombarding new immigrant Ben at once: trains; city streets; a tiny apartment (wedged in a corner of the spread); and, prominently placed, his own revolted reaction to tomatoes.

The illustrations are endlessly perusable, with several including tableaux populated with the subjects of Shahn's art. But Turk knows when to give the eye a rest. Where we see a group of images, there’s plenty of space on the same spread, though not plain-old “white space." It’s always more interesting in color, texture, or both. At the end, two spreads even use abstract doves — a Jewish symbol for peace — beautifully blended with pastel colors to form a background. 

I suspect that the better one knows Shahn’s work, the more references there are to discover in these pages; as it is, the people I recognize give me a starting point to learn more about Shahn by doing Google Image searches ("Ben Shahn Albert Einstein" and "Ben Shahn Martin Luther King"). Anyone familiar with Hebrew will find even more to discover in the illustrations. That punitive teacher Ben protests has words on the chalkboard behind him, including tzedek (justice), onesh (punishment), and emet (truth). On the last spread, when Ben as a grandfather is encouraging a young artist, the words etched into the background read “l’dor vador,” a liturgical phrase meaning “from generation to generation.”

Here’s to drawing in the margins.

[Read the Horn Book Magazine review of The People's Painter here.]