Customer Reviews

Painted Dreams

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a beautiful story by Karen Lynn Williams with exquisite watercolor drawings by Catherine Stock telling the story of a resource poor, but imagination-rich little girl in Haiti who uses the things around her to paint (bricks, feathers) until she has an opportunity to have more people see her work.

The paintings within paintings concept is beautiful, especially as it follows the steps of a budding girl artist within the context of her family and their livelihood. Children will engage with the beautiful watercolors and story of people who make more with less.

I've owned and used this story over many years in my 1st grade classroom, used more like it in days when we were allowed literature and the ability to talk about the world. I thought today (as I am out on leave with health issues) I'd order other books to join it, so I can put together a book box about Haiti. This will be my start. I'm sure children would like to read about this place that has now been so terrifically crushed by disaster on top of the weight it already bore in terms of poverty, infrastructure collapse, and in general as open sore on all our humanity.
I thought the story connected to something I know of young children, they like to express, create, and in almost any situation respond artistically in amazing ways.
I spent the day watching You Tubes on what life has really been like for children in Haiti. It isn't something I relate so much to the images of the book, but in the spirit of the people-yes-I see that.
I would imagine that this author would not mind if I suggest donating to the relief efforts.
I definitely know this would be doing something. But I think within schools we can spend time learning about the people, this horrible recent event, and trying to connect as we can to assist an utterly unbelievable situation.

This was a beautiful book. A bit long for my student's attention span, but that taking nothing away from the books content.

I am a Christian and would not have purchased this book if I knew it had a Voodoo doctor. The children in the book are afraid of the Voodoo doctor but it later portrays him as friendly. He tells the girl in the story her painting talent is a "gift from the spirits". I would say it was a gift from God. Voodoo is evil. (We adopted four children from Haiti. The older children in the orphanage were afraid of Voodoo. One of our daughters told us every time their neighbor practiced Voodoo, her birth mother started praying to Jesus.) I wish Voodoo wasn't in the book, or at least not portrayed in a positive manner. My daughter is very uncomfortable with this book.