Picasso and the Girl with a Ponytail by Laurence Anholt

This book is a great way to introduce Pablo Picasso to a student. It shows his culture and different parts of his artistic style. I really like that all of the illustrations are done in water color because it shows the artistic look of Europe. This author does a great job of presenting a biography of Pablo Picasso in a fun and kid-related way. Throughout the book, there are many pictures of his actual work. It is funny because the book starts out with the kids all sitting around talking about how amazing Picasso is, and then they look over the balcony to see that Picasso is yelling to them and showing them a picture that he has just sketched of Sylvette, the girl with the ponytail. He invites them into his studio and begins to draw a picture of Sylvette. The book shows his first painting of the girl as completely normal. Then the painting gradually starts to change, but the same image of the girl can still be seen. The third picture is actually done in his cubist style. This is something that a teacher could use to then show the kids more of his paintings in this style. Picasso teaches Sylvette that she can paint whatever she would like and not to be scared of failing. He shows her picture that he paints when he is in different moods. This part is cool also, because they are some of Picasso actual famous paintings. The author brings in a fact, that Picasso made sculptures from old junk, by showing him searching through a pile of junk. Sylvette tells Picasso many of her secrets and Picasso makes a sculpture of her with a key in hand, symbolizing that she can open new doors. On the very last page, the author reveals that Sylvette is a real girl and Picasso really did paint pictures of her that became famously known as, "The girl with the ponytail". There is also an actual photo of Sylvette as a teenager. This book would be a great read-aloud for a teacher when studying art history. Something fun the teacher could do with the class would be to look up more of Picasso's work on Sylvette.