Overview

There are days when an artist has no ideas left. For Henri Matisse, the great French artist, this is one of those days.Henri is empty. So he puts on his striped shirt and goes walking in his neighborhood. In the streets of Montmartre, he encounters his friend Amadou, whose father is from Senegal and mother is from Morocco. The artist tells Amadou that he is empty of ideas. His friend wants to show him a new sculpture, so Henri invites him to dinner at his home. Next, he meets his friend Tsuguhara and his cat, Leonard. When Tsuguhara hears that Henri is empty, he wants to show him prints from his native Japan, so Henri invites him and Leonard to dinner too. Finally, he sees his friend Sylvie. Hearing that her friend is empty of ideas, she wants to tell him stories of her native Martinique. Henri invites her to dinner with Amadou and Tsuguhara. As Henri buys three aubergines to cook for his friends, his mind and heart fill with the pink of cherry blossoms in Tokyo, the black of sculptures brought all the way from Africa, the blue of the endless waters of Martinique. From then on, his paintings are filled with the stories of his friends. And Henri is full.

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9781644420287

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Reviews

Sophisticated. . . . Brilliant golds, slate grays, and bright vermilion show passersby, a parade of umbrellas, and an elegant cityscape, and the sleek aesthetic gives the city's wet streets and glowing windows all the surprising glamor of a thumping storm. -- Publishers Weekly starred review of Nighttime Symphony Spectacular paintings . . . dynamic presentation. -- School Library Journal Through rhyming couplets, an African American father teaches his son to look at a nighttime rainstorm in a positive manner instead of being frightened. . . . This optimistic poem has the ability to turn a potentially scary bedtime into an enjoyable, relaxing experience. -- Booklist review of Nighttime Symphony

Through rhyming couplets, an African American father teaches his son to look at a nighttime rainstorm in a positive manner instead of being frightened. . . . This optimistic poem has the ability to turn a potentially scary bedtime into an enjoyable, relaxing experience. -- Booklist review of Nighttime Symphony Spectacular paintings . . . dynamic presentation. -- School Library Journal Sophisticated. . . . Brilliant golds, slate grays, and bright vermilion show passersby, a parade of umbrellas, and an elegant cityscape, and the sleek aesthetic gives the city's wet streets and glowing windows all the surprising glamor of a thumping storm. -- Publishers Weekly starred review of Nighttime Symphony

Author Information

Christopher Myers is a widely acclaimed author and illustrator living in New York. In addition to illustrating his own titles, he has worked with numerous authors, including E. E. Cummings, Zora Neale Hurston, and his father, the late great writer and educator Walter Dean Myers. The two worked together on the Caldecott Honor winner, Harlem, as well as the Coretta Scott King Honor winners Black Cat and H.O.R.S.E. Most recently he collaborated with dancer Misty Copeland on the picture book FIREBIRD. Myers is a versatile artist, working with photos, gouache, woodcuts, collage, and other artistic media. His fine art has been exhibited at MoMA PS1 and numerous museums and galleries nationally and internationally. Myers also co-directed the documentary film Am I Going Too Fast? with Hank Willis Thomas, and recently wrote and designed a play based on his experiences working with refugee youth in Munich, Cartography, commissioned by the Kennedy Center. He has written several notable essays, among them “Young Dreamers,” an eloquent reflection on Trayvon Martin and Ezra Jack Keats’s The Snowy Day, as well as the much-discussed “The Apartheid of Children’s Literature,” published in The New York Times in 2014. He is the Founder and Creative Director of Make Me a World, a publishing imprint at Penguin Random House. He lives in Brooklyn.

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