• Multi-page spreads that feature brief biographies, career highlights, and luminous reproductions of major works of each artist.
• In addition to widely known figures such as Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Picasso, young readers will learn about women artists such as Sofonisba Anguissola, Georgia O’Keeffe, Frida Kahlo, and Yayoi Kusama, and artists of color such as Jacob Lawrence, and Jean- Michel Basquiat.

• The wide-ranging selection also includes a variety of genres: including graffiti artist Banksy, photographer Cindy Sherman, Op-artist Bridget Riley, scientific illustrator Maria Sibylla Merian, and sculptor Louise Bourgeois.

• Running across the bottom of each page, a timeline highlighting world- shaping events helps contextualize the artists’ achievements on a global scale.

• They range from Michelangelo’s David and Pablo Picasso’s Guernica to Claude Monet’s Water Lilies and Frida Kahlo’s Self Portrait with Monkey.
• The book celebrates contributions of trailblazing women like Artemisia Gentileschi, Berthe Morisot, and Niki de Saint Phalle, as well as influential artists of color such as Faith Ringgold and Anish Kapoor.

• Children will discover intriguing stories about these masterworks, learn about the innovative techniques that made them stand out, and explore the movements they helped define.
• The large, richly detailed illustrations invite young readers to pause and explore, and a helpful timeline provides historic and cultural context.

Featuring full-color reproductions of fourteen artworks and illustrations of the artists at work, this picture book is an ideal introduction to contemporary art for young children, and a fantastic tool for teachers wishing to decolonize and diversify their classroom.

Sharna Jackson’s experience as a children’s author who has worked for over a decade in the cultural sector, both at Tate in London and at Site Gallery in Sheffield, is combined here with the curatorial expertise of Dr. Zoé Whitley, Director of London’s Chisenhale Gallery and co-curator of the landmark Tate exhibition "Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power." Their book features artists working in a variety of media from painting and sculpture to ceramics and installation.

The result is a refreshingly contemporary global celebration of Black artists at work today that will serve as inspiration to a new generation of aspiring young artists.

For ages 5+

How did a urinal become art? And a can of tomato soup, a tent, a pickled shark. . . . How did what seemed like a prank at the New York Armory Show of 1917 explode to become today's global multibillion-dollar art world? Blow Up! answers these questions by following the lives of seminal contemporary artists and the stories behind their groundbreaking works.

Against a backdrop of armed conflict (two World Wars, Japanese militarization, US troops in Vietnam, the Yugoslav Wars) and rapid societal change (democratization, successive waves of feminism, globalization), Blow Up! tells the story of contemporary art from Marcel Duchamp’s repurposed urinal to Maurizio Cattelan's taped banana. Literal bombs explode and conventions go up in flames as a series of art objects shock and electrify society: a pickled shark, a stuffed hare, human blood.

Chapters follow a series of chain reactions as artists meet and inspire each other across continents, generations, and decades. Over a period of one hundred years everything changes—and yet the cry of "It's not art!" never goes away. No matter how long people have had to get used to it, contemporary art continues to upset expectations and disrupt conventions—and inspire anew.