Van Gogh and the Post-Impressionists for Kids: Their Lives and Ideas, 21 Activities by Carol Sabbeth (For Kids series)

Vincent van Gogh has been my favorite artist for as long as I can remember, so when I saw Carol Sabbeth’s book, I jumped at the chance to review it.

Van Gogh and the Post-Impressionists for Kids follows the path of Vincent van Gogh and his artist peers Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Signac, and Emile Bernard, all post-Impressionistists who appreciated Impressionism before them but wanted to take their art one step further. The book begins with a timeline of the Post-Impressionist era, and from there author Carol Sabbeth dives right in. In this 161-page book, Sabbeth thoroughly details van Gogh’s life from serious, sometimes melancholy boy to ambitious, stubborn artist, portraying everything from his temper to the origin of his sunflower paintings to his long list of relationships and family tribulations. In other words, it depicts him as a man and an artist together, a complex vision that shows faith in the reader’s ability to understand the difference and how van Gogh developed as both. (more…)