The Met Hokusai

This was a beautiful and informational biography! I think kids will be drawn the lovely images and be inspired to create art just as Hokusai did.

A great introduction to artists, this is a good series for older readers reminiscent of the Little People Big Dreams series. A great classroom or library resource

The Met Hokusai is one of a new series of illustrated biographies of famous artists for young readers. Released 30th Nov 2021 by Penguin Random House on their DK imprint, it's 56 pages and is available in hardcover and ebook formats.

This is a clearly told and beautifully illustrated biography of the famous 18th century Japanese artist. The text is full of age-appropriate details about the artist's life and works. One thing I really enjoyed about this book (and the others in the series) are the reader drawing prompts generously scattered throughout. Readers are invited to draw in the style of an artist they admire, draw street scenes and people in their neighborhood, draw scenes from different seasons and many more. The prompts are placed on pages with tie-in background scenes and relevant observations about the artist's life and development.

This would be a good choice for public or school library acquisition, for the home library, and for gift giving to a young reader, perhaps bundled with some drawing tools and supplies.

Five stars. Genuinely well written and illustrated.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

I LOVE Hokusai's work. So when I saw this on NetGalley, I had to request it. I'm glad that I had the opportunity to read it. The colors are lush, the artwork crisp and the samples of Hokusai's work breathtaking, as his work is.

His life story is rather simplified, but this is for children, so it is a good amount of information. There are also little thought pieces and suggested exercises for the reader to do, which makes it nicely interactive and takes the subject beyond the book and into practical work.

Good book on a great subject, nicely scaled for children. I would definitely recommend this for children who enjoy art. There are lots of blocks of text, so maybe Middle Grade on up, depending on the reading level of the child. As always, I recommend the adult giving this book to the child to review it to make sure it is a good fit for the child it is being given to. Not for any adult content, but for the more advanced reading it requires. I am always afraid if something is TOO hard, it will scare the child away. Challenging is good. Impossible is not.

4, I love Hokusai and I hope this book creates more Hokusai lovers, stars.

My thanks to NetGalley and DK Childrens for a copy of this book to read and review.

*received for free from netgalley for honest review* i took a lot of art classes as a kid so im familiar with the artist but this was a really cool read none the less!

This is a great series, and it does a wonderful job of introducing art and artists to kids. The writing is engaging, filled with interesting, age-appropriate information and wonderful illustration, Throughout each story, there are prompts related to the art and artist being covered, inviting the reader to try out different techniques and styles of art, and readers get to see what the artists themselves were inspired by. I would've loved this series as a child!
Hokusai is a favorite of mine, and I really enjoyed learning about his life and art. He was groundbreaking for his time, combining styles to make a style that was his own in a time when artists were expecting to follow and produce the style of one master. The story highlights his feeling that he was always learning, always improving, and hadn't reached his potential yet, a good message to young artists, I think - it's always inspirational to find out even those we think of as masters feel they are still learning their craft.

#TheMetHokusai #NetGalley

An innovative and beautiful way of teaching and learning about art! I love this series, and will definitely be looking to add some of these titles to my college's picture book collection.

It was great to read this book to learn about Hokusai and one of my favourite paintings. The illustrations were great at supporting the text. I learned a lot about Japanese art and history!