©2007 Matthew Trueman
Client: Random Hosue
Medium: Acrylic & & Mixed Media on Paper
Size: Various sizes
Use: Children Book

AWARDS
2008 Notable Book for Younger Readers by the Sydney Taylor Book Award Committee of the Association of Jewish Libraries
2008 list of The Best Children’s Books of the Year, for books published in 2007, The Bank Street College of Education.

REVIEWS
From Booklist
Marc Chagall claims he never saw a drawing until age 16, when a classmate sat tracing a magazine picture. Kimmel uses Chagall's memory as the basis for his own story in which a younger Marc first encounters art. After a brief stint of tracing, he begins drawing original pictures, all the while pondering the difference between copying and drawing, the meaning of art, and eventually, the role of artist to show us what is truly beautiful and important in the world. Once Marc realizes his passion for art, he must convince his skeptical parents to let him study with a local art teacher. Trueman's fine black-and-white illustrations capture Chagall's fluid style and appear at regular intervals. Fictional components make the book inappropriate for reports, and the book is more conversation than action, but Kimmel succeeds at making the abstract concept of art accessible to young readers. A list of sources and an author's note are appended. Harold, Suzanne

Kirkus Reviews
For a young Jewish boy growing up in Tsarist Russia, wanting to become an artist is not likely to meet with enthusiastic parental support. In this case, the boy is the young Marc Chagall, an aspiring artist with a gift for seeing beauty in the ordinary. He observes, "We all need art to show us what is truly beautiful and important in the world . . . We need art to show us how to live, how to be alive in the world." Marc's parents obviously relent and allow their son to study art, and the rest is history. For this fictionalized account, Kimmel takes only the bare bones of Chagall's story-the Russian village, the influential art teacher, the worried parents-to get across what is truly important: to follow your dream. Simple black-and-white drawings have a childlike quality as if done by the young Chagall. (author's note, bibliography) (Fiction. 6-10)