Mr. Matisse and His Cutouts

PreS-Gr 3—When Henri Matisse, because of illness, could no longer paint and sculpt using traditional methods, he created cutouts, a combination of sculpture and painting. This allowed the 20th-century artist to flourish in spite of challenges to his mobility. Van Haeringen imagines how Matisse discovered the process of creating cutouts in his hospital bed after his abdominal surgery. The illustrations, in pen and ink and watercolor, depict Matisse's famous red studio, his hospital room, and the transformation of the hospital room into a paper garden of colorful cutouts. The author pays tribute to Matisse by incorporating elements of his style (vivid colors and shapes) into the illustrations. This title is similar to Jeanette Winter's Henri's Scissors. However, while Winter used direct quotes from letters, van Haeringen relies on imagined dialogue. The text is not as fluid as the illustrations; the narration switches from third person to first person in the span of a single page. A brief biographical note on Matisse's art career and his later illness is included at the end of the book and provides context to some of the missing details in the main text.