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Summary
Summary
The bold story of Maya Lin, the visionary artist-architect who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
You may be familiar with the iconic Vietnam Veterans Memorial. But do you know about the artist-architect who created this landmark?
As a child, Maya Lin loved to study the spaces around her. She explored the forest in her backyard, observing woodland creatures, and used her house as a model to build tiny towns out of paper and scraps. The daughter of a clay artist and a poet, Maya grew up with art and learned to think with her hands as well as her mind. From her first experiments with light and lines to the height of her success nationwide, this is the story of an inspiring American artist: the visionary artist-architect who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
A Christy Ottaviano Book
Author Notes
Jeanne Walker Harvey studied literature and psychology at Stanford University and has had many jobs, ranging from being a roller coaster ride operator to an attorney and, most recently a middle school teacher of Language Arts and writing workshops. She is the author of several books for young readers, including My Hands Sing the Blues : Romare Bearden's Childhood Journey . She lives in California.
Dow Phumiruk is a general pediatrician with a passion for art. She lives in Colorado with her husband and three girls. When she is not teaching medical students or drawing, she can be found hiking on the trails near her home. Maya Lin is her picture book debut.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Harvey (My Hands Sing the Blues) and debut illustrator Phumiruk recount the career of architect Maya Lin, using a textual and visual sparseness that echoes Lin's minimalist style. Harvey introduces Lin as an observant child with an eye for form, structure, and the interplay of light. While in college, Lin entered the Vietnam Memorial design contest, which required including the names of almost 58,000 dead or missing soldiers: "These rules rang true to Maya. She knew the power of names." Harvey provides just enough biographical details to give a sense of Lin's life, including touching on the initial backlash against her design for the memorial, while Phumiruk's muted artwork, assembled digitally, makes good use of watercolor and corrugated textures to evoke the inspiration Lin drew from nature. Ages 4-8. Agent: Deborah Warren, East West Literary. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
In its early pages, this quiet and contemplative picture-book biography sets up artist-architect Maya Lins fascination with spaces, natural and human-made, and their dynamic relationship with phenomena such as light. The daughter of two Chinese-immigrant artists, a potter and a poet who never told Maya what to be or how to think, Maya honed both her creativity and her intellect as a child. She went on to study architecture, a fusion of art, science, and math, in college. During her senior year at Yale, Maya entered a national contest to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, inspired by its guideline that the design must blend with the park setting. That a twenty-one-year-old novice beat out 1,420 other candidates, many of them famous architects, is intrinsically captivating fodder for a picture book, and Lins conviction about her own design in the face of public backlash is a built-in lesson in perseverance. Appropriately, the books muted art has the fine lines, precision, and spatial astuteness of architectural drawings, and Phumiruks use of perspective is often striking. A wide double-page spread of the finished memorial, for instance, impressively captures its length as the wall of fallen solders names stretches diagonally toward the horizon. Harveys text makes thoughtful, relatable connections between Lins work and the themes of her life; an authors note adds supplementary details on the memorials design and touches on Lins later work. katrina hedeen (c) Copyright 2017. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
In 1981, judges selected Maya Lin's design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial from 1,421 entries. A senior at Yale University, Lin was just 21. In this introduction to the influential American designer, Harvey portrays Lin's early inspirations, from the forests and hills of her Ohio hometown and the progressive professions of her parents (her poet mother and clay-artist father, both Chinese immigrants, never told Maya what to be or how to think) to the patterns of light and lines in buildings at Yale and abroad. The book also emphasizes Lin's artistic process, revealing the impetus a reflective sliver in the earth's surface for what would be her first (of many) major works of art, and the mashed potato models, sketches, and backlash that accompanied it. All the while, the clean lines in Phumiruk's deliberately sparse, light-infused spreads and the placement of slender, pillarlike passages of text reinforce the breathtaking beauty of Lin's sleek landmark. With a closing author's note detailing Lin's motivations for projects past and present, this is an artful resource for dreamers of all ages.--Shemroske, Briana Copyright 2017 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Gr 1-3-So often do we admire and revere our national monuments without giving much thought to those who conceptualized and created them. This quietly inspiring title offers a biographical sketch of Maya Lin, the designer and architect behind Washington's Vietnam Veterans Memorial, completed in 1982. Although the text does not delve deeply into all of the specifics of Lin's life, it imparts basic information about her childhood interest in art and architecture, describes her college studies to strengthen these skills, and explains how as a senior in college she entered a contest and came to create an iconic and poignant monument. Also addressed are the controversies that came with Lin being selected for this project, the opposition she faced, and the way she bravely stood her ground and championed her design and the reasoning behind it. The simple yet lyrical narrative flows effortlessly and will not overwhelm young readers. Lin's story encourages the study of art, architecture, and engineering, making it an ideal choice to pair with STEAM-related activities. The soft color palette of the digital illustrations (made with scans of watercolors and textures) provides a complementary backdrop to the words, and Phumiruk ably conveys Lin's determination. VERDICT While this book is not comprehensive, it contextualizes the topic and presents an optimal opportunity to spark conversations on art and war. A fine pick for any public or school library collection.-Rita Meade, Brooklyn Public Library © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A concise biography introduces the Chinese-American artist and designer Maya Lin, best known for her architectural plan for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Lin, the child of a ceramic artist and a poet who "had fled China at a time when people were toldhow to think," spends hours as a child playing in the nearby woods and building miniature towns of "paper and scraps." Lin is in her last year of college when she enters a competition to design a proposed memorial to Vietnam War veterans, to be built on the National Mall. The design had to include the 58,000 names of those soldiers who had died in Vietnam. Lin's design was chosen in the anonymous competition but was not without controversy when her name was revealed. The illustration of the completed memorial focuses on the wall and Lin's original concept, built into the earth, rising and falling with the landscape, rather than the compromised result, with statues representing soldiers. Phumiruk's clean-lined, crisp illustrations, done in Photoshop, and light palette emphasize connections between Lin's concepts and the strong influences of nature on Lin's art. The margins of the page containing Harvey's author's note about Lin's work are filled with artists' and architects' tools, neatly labeled: ink pens, blueprints, pastels. Harvey provides websites for further information but no specific sources for her work. Overall, a fine celebration of a renowned woman artist. (Picture book/biography. 4-8) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
