Art is for everyone—even a bored little girl. Going to the Art Museum with her mom is no fun at all for Anna. Everything is old and boring and there are so many rules: Don’t Touch! Do Not Enter! Quiet! A vigilant guard keeps a close eye on the energetic little girl, but even so, Anna manages to set off an alarm and almost tip over a vase. A half-open door draws Anna’s attention, but the No Entry sign means yet again that it’s off-limits. This time, however, the guard surprises her by inviting her to go in. Here she finds a “secret workshop” where paintings are being cleaned and repaired. Staring out from one of the canvases is a girl who looks grumpy and bored—just like Anna herself. With the realization that art often imitates life, Anna discovers the sheer joy to be had from the paintings on the wall, especially those that reflect what is happening all around her. Filled with representations of paintings from many world-class galleries, this charming book is the perfect prelude to a child’s first visit to an art museum.

The harvest garden is bursting with delicious vegetables, the pumpkins are decorated and lit, and the mice have their costumes ready. Everyone is looking forward to the annual Halloween-night feast. Scary Cat wasn’t invited to the party, but he seems to think he’s coming anyway. Time for a clever mouse-style surprise to outsmart that cat!

Cats and birds can’t be friends! They have absolutely nothing in common. After all, cats are supposed to eat birds, not play with them! But there’s something special about this prey-and-predator pair…and they may just find that it’s our differences that bring us closer together. In a delightful picture book filled with pleasing banter and hilarious quips, rising talent Coll Muir creates the perfect unlikely friendship between unexpected creatures. Perfect for fans of Jon Klassen’s I Want My Hat Back, This Is Not My Hat, and We Found a Hat.

Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) was a world-renowned modern artist noted for her sculptures made of wood, steel, stone, and cast rubber. Her most famous spider sculpture, Maman, stands more than 30 feet high. Just as spiders spin and repair their webs, Louise's own mother was a weaver of tapestries. Louise spent her childhood in France as an apprentice to her mother before she became a tapestry artist herself. She worked with fabric throughout her career, and this biographical picture book shows how Bourgeois's childhood experiences weaving with her loving, nurturing mother provided the inspiration for her most famous works. With a beautifully nuanced and poetic story, this book stunningly captures the relationship between mother and daughter and illuminates how memories are woven into us all.

Often seen drawing in white chalk on the matte black paper of unused advertising space in the subway, Haring's iconic pop art and graffiti-like style transformed the New York City underground in the 1980s. A member of the LGBTQ community, Haring died tragically at the age of thirty-one from AIDS-related complications. Illustrated in paint by Josh Cochran, himself a specialist in bright, dense, conceptual drawings, this honest, celebratory book honors Haring's life and art, along with his very special connection with kids.

Nine-year-old Caroline Markham visits the local art gallery — and makes an extraordinary discovery. In one corner there is something even more compelling than the paintings. It's a sculpture of a girl named Nina with a cat named Sammy on her lap, sitting in a rocking chair. There is no Do Not Touch sign like on the paintings. And Caroline can actually push the chair back and forth, and pat Sammy. Then one day a sign is placed on the sculpture: Moving Soon. It's a heart-breaker. Here begins the inspiring story of one girl's successful fight to save Saskatoon's famous Mendel Gallery sculpture, rallying an entire city to her side, proving to all that one person can really make a difference, even against soaring odds. This is all a true story. Caroline was a real girl. And the sculpture is still in Saskatoon today. Author Beverley Brenna worked with Caroline in Saskatoon Public Schools, and she has written the story with the endorsement of Caroline?s family. Illustrations by the inimitable Brooke Kerrigan catch the magic of this motivational story and the daring of Caroline's efforts to keep Nina and Sammy close by in her world.

In 1914, Tom Thomson spent the summer at a family cottage on Lake Huron's Georgian Bay, where he taught the ten-year-old daughter, Helen, how to paint. Author Susan Vande Griek and illustrator Pascal Milelli have imagined this time through Helen's eyes, providing an intriguing glimpse into the famous painter's life. Helen and her father greet their visitor on the rocks of West Wind Island. She is fascinated by everything about him - his canoe full of gear, his paint-stained hands, his campfire stew. Over the next few days she watches as Tom paddles off to fish and clambers over the rocks to paint. And then he invites Helen to paint with him - wildflowers blooming near the cottage, boats rocking in the water, pine trees blowing in a storm. And at summer's end, he leaves her with a memento of their time together. The story, told in lyrical free verse, has a quiet charm, while the illustrations capture the natural beauty that inspired some of Thomson's most memorable paintings. An author's note provides more information about Tom Thomson's life.

Step into the colorful world of Henri Matisse and his magnificent paper cutouts! In a small weaving town in France, a young boy named Henri-Emile Matisse drew pictures everywhere, and when he grew up, he moved to Paris and became a famous artist who created paintings that were adored around the world. But late in life a serious illness confined him to a wheelchair, and amazingly, it was from there that he created among his most beloved works—enormous and breathtaking paper cutouts. Based on the life of Henri Matisse, this moving and inspirational picture book biography includes a note from the author, dynamic quotes from Matisse himself, and an illuminating look at a little-known part of a great artist’s creative process.

A stunning new picture book from Newbery Medalist Kwame Alexander and Caldecott Honoree Melissa Sweet! This New York Times bestselling duo has teamed up for the first time to bring you How to Read a Book, a poetic and beautiful journey about the experience of reading. Find a tree—a black tupelo or dawn redwood will do—and plant yourself. (It’s okay if you prefer a stoop, like Langston Hughes.) With these words, an adventure begins. Kwame Alexander’s evocative poetry and Melissa Sweet’s lush artwork come together to take readers on a sensory journey between the pages of a book. How to Read a Book has received three starred reviews!

For Fig’s dad, hurricane season brings the music. For Fig, hurricane season brings the possibility of disaster. Fig, a sixth grader, loves her dad and the home they share in a beachside town. She does not love the long months of hurricane season. Her father, a once-renowned piano player, sometimes goes looking for the music in the middle of a storm. Hurricane months bring unpredictable good and bad days. More than anything, Fig wants to see the world through her father’s eyes, so she takes an art class to experience life as an artist does. Then Fig’s dad shows up at school, confused and looking for her. Not only does the class not bring Fig closer to understanding him, it brings social services to their door. As the walls start to fall around her, Fig is sure it’s up to her alone to solve her father’s problems and protect her family’s privacy. But with the help of her best friend, a cute girl at the library, and a surprisingly kind new neighbor, Fig learns she isn’t as alone as she once thought . . . and begins to compose her own definition of family. Nicole Melleby’s Hurricane Season is a radiant and tender novel about taking risks and facing danger, about friendship and art, and about growing up and coming out. And more than anything else, it is a story about love—both its limits and its incredible healing power.

If someone asked you to paint a snowman, you would probably start with three white circles stacked one upon another. Then you would add black dots for eyes, an orange triangle for a nose, and a black dotted smile. But if Picasso painted a snowman.   From that simple premise flows this delightful, whimsical, educational picture book that shows how the artists imagination can summon magic from a prosaic subject. Greg Newbolds chameleon-like artistry shows us Roy Lichtensteins snow hero saving the day, Georgia OKeefes snowman blooming in the desert, Claude Monets snowmen among haystacks, Grant Woods American Gothic snowman, Jackson Pollocks snowman in ten thousand splats, Salvador Dalis snowmen dripping like melty cheese, and snowmen as they might have been rendered by J. M. W. Turner, Gustav Klimt, Paul Klee, Marc Chagall, Georges Seurat, Pablita Velarde, Piet Mondrian, Sonia Delaunay, Jacob Lawrence, and Vincent van Gogh. What would your snowman look like? the book asks, and then offers a page with a picture frame for a child to fill in. Backmatter thumbnail biographies of the artists complete this highly original tour of the creative imagination that will delight adults as well as children.

The finest example of two great artists working together to explore the soul of their nation. The Journals of Susanna Moodie, arguably Margaret Atwood’s finest work of poetry, was first published by Oxford University Press in 1970. In it, she adopts the voice of Susanna Strickland Moodie, an English woman who came to live in the rural area near Peterborough, Ontario in the mid-nineteenth century, and who wrote about her experiences for English readers in her classic account of Canadian pioneer life, Roughing it in the Bush. Atwood’s poetry, based on the Moodie prose, covers Moodie’s arrival in Canada in 1832 and ends with a prophetic commentary by a dead Susanna Moodie on twentieth-century Canada. Charles Pachter began illustrating the poems in 1968, when Atwood sent him a first manuscript. Of his first reading, he has written: “It was a fateful moment. I was so stunned by its beauty and power that I realized that every early Atwood folio I had done up until now (there were five) must be a rehearsal for this.” The thirty images were completed within a year, but the original folio was not produced until 1980, when 120 copies were hand-printed in a boxed edition, which is now in public and private collections around the world. In 1997, MacfarlaneWalter & Ross published a smallformat edition in hard covers.