Signs of Hope
The Revolutionary Art of Sister Corita Kent
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Signs of Hope is a picture book biography of groundbreaking artist, teacher, and Catholic nun Corita Kent from critically acclaimed author Mara Rockliff, with stunning full-color art from Caldecott Honor winner Melissa Sweet.
Let Corita teach you how to see the world in a whole new way!
Sister Corita Kent, the “pop art nun,” burst onto the 1960s art scene with splashes of color and ad slogans transformed into messages of love, hope, peace, and justice. The art world would never be the same—and neither would the young people whose lives she changed.
Join Corita’s students as they learn how to look at the world around them through an artist’s eyes. With Corita, work is play, imagination means adventure, and there is no line between life and art.
Told with joy and energy by award-winning author Mara Rockliff and spectacularly illustrated by two-time Caldecott Honor winner Melissa Sweet, Signs of Hope brings a revolutionary artist’s teachings—still fresh, still inspiring—to a new generation. As Corita told her students, “Be ready to see what you haven’t seen before!”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Just right for young creatives, this optimistic biography of artist Corita Kent (1918–1986) shimmers with the figure's energy and sense of possibility. The story launches with an art lesson explained by an unidentified narrator: "Sister Corita teaches us to SEE/ what everybody sees/ but doesn't see." Images depicting a group viewing the world through a "finder"—a piece of cardboard with a square removed—and experimenting with art in a classroom are interspersed with hand-rendered typography that quotes Kent's insights ("The commonplace is not worthless, there is simply lots of it"). Yellows, pinks, and oranges dominate Sweet's mixed-media collage illustrations, which pivot to b&w to portray a scene describing "injustice, inequality, prejudice, poverty" and back into color to convey Kent's eventual renown and departure from the church. Combining pop art and protest, the result is a joyous nexus of experimentation and creative responsibility that details a "small and quiet" figure whose art remains "big and loud." Creators' notes, an artist timeline, and a list of quotation sources conclude. Background characters are portrayed with various skin tones. Ages 4–8.
