Wanda Gág: The Girl Who Lived to Draw Book

Deborah Kogan Ray's Wanda Gág: The Girl Who Lived to Draw is a short but always sufficiently detailed picture book biography of famous Bohemian-American children's illustrator and author Wanda Gág (amongst her many books being Newbery Award winner Millions of Cats and Newbery Honour winner The ABC Bunny), a delightful narrative that not only covers and describes the main points both happy and sad, both triumphant and tragic of Wanda Gág's life, but also very much and importantly demonstrates that especially with regard to children who are by nature artistically inclined and talented, a supportive and indeed equally art and culture hungry family is often not only a boon but indeed sometimes even what artistic children very much do require in order to flourish and be able to without reservations engage in their craft, in their artistic desires and wants. For without especially her father's constant encouragement and this even as he was dying of consumption, and equally without Wanda Gág's entire family being all and sundry absolutely and totally both "into" art and always sympathetic to and understanding of not only Wanda's talents but also and especially her decided need to constantly be drawing, painting etc., while Wanda Gág might still have become an artist without said support and encouragement, as art was obviously where her so-called calling lay, becoming an artist might well have proven considerably more difficult and painful, with more hurdles to surmount had her family not been right from square one so to speak so totally and utterly in favour of her artistic endeavours (as even when after her father's death, fifteen year old Wanda as the eldest was hard at work trying to earn money for her family's basic needs and to provide for her younger siblings an adequate education, much if not even the majority of her employment opportunities were artistically based, and with her mother's full support, Wanda started selling hand painted and drawn bookmarks, holiday cards and the like, as well as writing and illustrating stories that she would send to magazines, and of course, when Wanda took first place at artistic competitions, any prize money won always went right back into the family coffers).

Now Deborah Kogan Ray's presented narrative is both readable and immediate, and indeed, that in Wanda Gág: The Girl Who Lived to Draw, Wanda Gág's own words (from her diaries) are often interspersed with Deborah Kogan Ray's text, this does to and for me make Wand Gág: The Girl Who Lived to Draw much more personal and relatable than if the author had just written about her (for one gets to know Wanda Gág's personality, her feelings and how important especially art in every way was to and for her). An enlightening, informative and yes also very much delightful and inspiring homage to a girl (and later a woman) who defintely truly and utterly lived to draw, to whom art was life and life was art, I highly recommend Wanda Gág: The Girl Who Lived to Draw and the only reason I am not granting five stars is that although I have certainly very much aesthetically enjoyed the accompanying illustrations, I most definitely would have preferred for Deborah Kogan Ray to have included considerably more of Wanda Gág's own artwork (and also, while I do much appreciate the included author's note and bibliography, I do wish that the latter, that the bibliography were a bit more prominently displayed and not simply relegated to the very last page of Wanda Gág: The Girl Who Lived to Draw, as truth be told, I almost missed it).