Here are 100 books that Dorothea's Eyes fans have personally recommended if you like
Dorothea's Eyes.
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I love the ocean—the awesome power of the waves, the shifting of tides, the beauty of life below the surface, and the infinite freedom of the boundless horizon. I feel free when I walk along the ocean, at one with wild nature of which human nature is a part. I respect the life-giving force of the water that covers most of Earth’s surface, water that made life possible billions of years ago and that sustains life today. As a science writer, I feel it is my responsibility to convey my passion for the ocean and the importance of protecting it for the health of our planet and future generations.
I am inspired by people who break barriers to succeed. Ichthyologist (fish biologist) Eugenie Clark is such a person. She became a deep-sea diver at a time when not many women were in the water actively doing ocean research. All ocean creatures interested her, but her specialty was sharks! During her 92-year lifespan, she made many dives both in submersible vehicles and with SCUBA.
Because of her work, she became known as the “Shark Lady.” Once, while diving, she rode on the back of a 50-foot whale shark. I have only seen sharks in large aquariums, such as the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, but thanks to Eugenie Clark’s underwater research, I have learned many surprising things about them in the wild.
One of New York Times' Twelve Books for Feminist Boys and Girls! This is the story of a woman who dared to dive, defy, discover, and inspire. This is the story of Shark Lady. One of the best science picture books for children, Shark Lady is a must for both teachers and parents alike! An Amazon Best Book of the Month Named a Best Children's Book of 2017 by Parents magazine Eugenie Clark fell in love with sharks from the first moment she saw them at the aquarium. She couldn't imagine anything more exciting than studying these graceful creatures. But…
There is something so magical about creating art and bringing an idea to life. As a writer and an art teacher, I love watching artists of any age find their own inspiration and joy in creating. I have used these books to launch all kinds of projects, from paintings to pottery, for every age and stage of artist. I hope you will find inspiration in these pages, too!
From the bright colors and mid-century modern style to the story behind a woman artist who created my favorite ride at Disneyland, there is so much I love about this fun picture book biography. With words like sienna, azure, and veridian, it is a great jumping off point for exploring color and color theory.
This book is also fantastic inspiration for designing your own colorful castles!
Amy Guglielmo, Jacqueline Tourville, and Brigette Barrager team up to tell the joyful and unique story of the trailblazing Disney artist Mary Blair.
Mary Blair lived her life in color: vivid, wild color.
From her imaginative childhood to her career as an illustrator, designer, and animator for Walt Disney Studios, Mary wouldn’t play by the rules. At a time when studios wanted to hire men and think in black and white, Mary painted twinkling emerald skies, peach giraffes with tangerine spots, and magenta horses that could fly.
I’m an award-winning children’s author who lives in Australia. I love reading and writing picture books, and although I mostly write fiction, I also love writing biographies. I am drawn to stories about women who have achieved something inspirational and unexpected and who may have not received wide recognition at the time or that any recognition has faded from public knowledge. I find it exciting to work with a team, that is the illustrator and the publisher, to create books that will find their way to children and allow them to imagine and feel another person’s life, and to see that everyday people do amazing things.
Mary Garber loved sport. She played sport. She read about sport. And she wanted to write about sport. So, what’s wrong with that? Nothing! Then why, as a woman, was she banned from the Press Box? During the 1940’s, sports reporting was a man’s job and Mary was discouraged from pursuing this type of work. But she did. After working decades in a job she loved, she became known as a reporter who didn’t care who you were or where you were from. If you did something, she was going to write about you. I love this book for showing the strength and determination of Mary and how she brought her own special talents and observations to the reporting world. The illustrations beautifully capture the action and the era of this story.
“A heartfelt, informative, and thoroughly engaging picture book biography.” —School Library Journal (starred review)
From beloved author Sue Macy comes an illustrated biography of Mary Garber, one of the first female sports journalists in American history!
Mary Garber was a pioneering sports journalist in a time where women were rarely a part of the newspaper business. Women weren’t even allowed to sit in the press boxes at sporting events, so Mary was forced to sit with the coaches’ wives. But that didn’t stop her.
In a time when African American sports were not routinely covered, Mary went to the games…
I’m an award-winning children’s author who lives in Australia. I love reading and writing picture books, and although I mostly write fiction, I also love writing biographies. I am drawn to stories about women who have achieved something inspirational and unexpected and who may have not received wide recognition at the time or that any recognition has faded from public knowledge. I find it exciting to work with a team, that is the illustrator and the publisher, to create books that will find their way to children and allow them to imagine and feel another person’s life, and to see that everyday people do amazing things.
The Anna Comstock story shows us a girl who loved the natural world. She was a naturalist and an artist who was determined to encourage schools to take students outdoors to increase their interest in nature. Outdoors! ‘Didn’t she know school rules?’ Her persistence paid off when several schools agreed to let students tromp through forests and fields. Her art which is beautifully represented in the illustrations, and her books helped children realize that all living things are connected. I love a book that shows passion for wildlife and the environment. Anna’s story does just that.
**2018 NSTA Outstanding Science Trade Book**This picture book biography examines the life and career of naturalist and artist Anna Comstock (1854-1930), who defied social conventions and pursued the study of science. From the time she was a young girl, Anna Comstock was fascinated by the natural world. She loved exploring outdoors, examining wildlife and learning nature's secrets. From watching the teamwork of marching ants to following the constellations in the sky, Anna observed it all. And her interest only increased as she grew older and went to college at Cornell University. There she continued her studies, pushing back against those…
As a reader, I’m drawn to characters and subjects I can relate to. Strong women who go their own way, ones who march to their own drummer. There is a raw honesty to their stories with subjects of creativity, grief, and loss. And as a writer of both fiction and personal essay, I write about these same issues as well, subjects I seem to turn to again and again. When I write, I try to tap into the emotions that might be buried but I’m always looking to move my readers whether it’s with tears or laughter, and the women in the books I chose do that for me.
Hold Still by Sally Mann – another memoir by an intriguing, strong-willed, fascinating woman. I became interested in Sally Mann when I first saw her book of amazing photographs of her children, Immediate Family. Since then I kept up with her photography and was thrilled to read her memoir. She writes of her childhood in the south, her parents, her relationship with her husband and children, the controversy surrounding those early stages photographs, her career, and beyond in absolutely lovely prose accompanied by many photos. She’s an impressive, talented woman, and her success is well deserved.
This National Book Award finalist is a revealing and beautifully written memoir and family history from acclaimed photographer Sally Mann.
In this groundbreaking book, a unique interplay of narrative and image, Mann's preoccupation with family, race, mortality, and the storied landscape of the American South are revealed as almost genetically predetermined, written into her DNA by the family history that precedes her.
Sorting through boxes of family papers and yellowed photographs she finds more than she bargained for: "deceit and scandal, alcohol, domestic abuse, car crashes, bogeymen, clandestine affairs, dearly loved and disputed family land . . . racial complications,…
Photography has been a passion throughout my life. I remember so clearly my first experience of the dark room: the dim red light, the chemical smell of the developing solution, and a ghost-like image gradually coming into focus. In my novel I Stopped Time I wanted to pay tribute to the pioneers of photography, but would I be able to bring that same depth of clarity to the written word? It was an incredibly proud moment when one reviewer wrote, "This book voiced everything I’ve held inside of me as a photographer."
I loved the ambitious concept behind William Boyd’s novel. Take seventy-five ‘found photos’ and construct a life around them.
At the age of seventy, Amory Clay is reflecting on her long photographic career, which took her from London, where she photographed the smart set, to Berlin where she captured its nightlife. Like Lee Miller, Amory Clay transitioned from New York fashion shoots to photojournalism, reporting on war-torn Normandy, and, much later, in the Vietnam war. Now, she’s about to embark on a personal mission—to track down her daughter, Blythe.
Boyd seamlessly weaves fact with fiction. This was one of those books that had me Googling the names of characters, thinking that there must be two photographers I had overlooked, only to conclude that they were fictional. (I shan’t give the game away and tell you which!)
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Amory Clay's first memory is of her father doing a handstand - but it is his absences that she chiefly remembers. Her Uncle Greville, a photographer, gives her both the affection she needs and a camera, which unleashes a passion that irrevocably shapes her future. She begins an apprenticeship with him in London, photographing socialites for magazines. But Amory is hungry for more and her search for life, love and artistic expression will take her to the demi-monde of 1920s Berlin, New York in the 1930s, the Blackshirt riots in London, and France during…
I’m a historian of Latin America and a professor at California State University, Los Angeles. I write about Chile’s labor and social history in the twentieth century. As a historian, I am especially interested in understanding how working people relate with public institutions and authorities, what they expect from the state, and how they have organized and expanded social and economic rights. While my research centers in Chile and Latin America, I also look to place regional debates in a transnational framework and see how ideas and people have moved across borders. I like books that bring working people’s diverse voices and experiences.
In the 1930s, Dorothea Lang photographed poor and migrant families across the United States. She documented the devastating impact of the Great Depression, contributing to raising national awareness about the consequences of poverty. In this outstanding and engaging biography, Linda Gordon tells the story of her life and work and how her photographs were part of a larger political movement to transform and expand social protection to US citizens.
We all know Dorothea Lange's iconic photos-the Migrant Mother holding her child, the shoeless children of the Dust Bowl-but now renowned American historian Linda Gordon brings them to three-dimensional life in this groundbreaking exploration of Lange's transformation into a documentarist. Using Lange's life to anchor a moving social history of twentieth-century America, Gordon masterfully re-creates bohemian San Francisco, the Depression, and the Japanese-American internment camps. Accompanied by more than one hundred images-many of them previously unseen and some formerly suppressed-Gordon has written a sparkling, fast-moving story that testifies to her status as one of the most gifted historians of our…
I have been involved in the arts all my life, working as a writer, in film, and as a musician. I have degrees in music and creative writing and have studied visual arts and art history extensively as well. Besides being an author, I teach writing and humanities at the college level. I hope you enjoy these books as much as I do!
Dorothea Lange struggled with disease and disability and eventually found her path, becoming one of America’s greatest photographers through her ability to capture the human experience notably through photographs of people in the Great Depression. This book not only helps readers learn about Lange, but it aids them in understanding this difficult time in United States’ history. The illustrations are colorful and engaging, portraying a wide range of emotions that express the essence of Lange and her work.
STARRED REVIEW! "Weatherford never talks down to her audience…using figurative language and rich vocabulary to tell her story…Green's debut as a picture-book illustrator is brilliant…A fine introduction to an important American artist."―Kirkus Reviews starred review
Dorothea Lange saw what others missed.
Before she raised her lens to take her most iconic photo, Dorothea Lange took photos of the downtrodden, from bankers in once-fine suits waiting in breadlines, to former slaves, to the homeless sleeping on sidewalks. A case of polio had left her with a limp and sympathetic to those less fortunate. Traveling across the United States, documenting with her…
I grew up in a creative family. My father was an illustrator before becoming a children’s book author and novelist. My mother, a trained dancer, became my father’s collaborator, illustrating their internationally-known Frances books. They inspired me and encouraged me to develop my own talent. I started writing at nine, and have never stopped since. I became a journalist, writing about culture and art for The New York times, New York Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Vogue, among others. I am also the author of three well-received artist biographies: Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art; Lucian Freud: Eyes Wide Open; and Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty.
Lyon’s protagonist, Lu Rile, is a struggling, ambitious young photographer, living in a derelict Brooklyn warehouse that might soon be destroyed by real-estate developers. In order to somehow pay the rent while at the same time take care of her ill and aging father, she desperately juggles three jobs. When not at work, Lu is in the midst of creating a series of self-portraits of herself in the window of her loft, when she accidentally captures the image of a young boy, the son of her upstairs neighbors, falling to his death. (Shades of Antonioni’s famous film, Blow Up, which also features a key but inadvertent photograph.)
She recognizes at once that it is the best picture she has ever taken, but instantly understands that it poses a major moral dilemma. Should she pull every string she can to get it shown, in an effort to initiate and stamp…
Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
“Fabulously written, this spellbinding debut novel is a real page-turner. A powerful, brilliantly imagined story” (Library Journal, starred review) about an ambitious young artist whose accidental photograph of a boy falling to his death could jumpstart her career, but devastate her most intimate friendship.
Lu Rile is a relentlessly focused young photographer struggling to make ends meet. Working three jobs, responsible for her aging father, and worrying that her crumbling loft apartment is being sold to developers, she is at a point of desperation. One day, in the background of a…
Against all odds, women journalists have built a robust tradition of telling the truth and getting to the heart of the story no matter the obstacles. In a world where the Fourth Estate is ever more crucial, the history of female reporters is all the more relevant as a source of information and inspiration for the next generation of correspondents. As a woman’s historian and passionate supporter of freedom of the press I’m always on the lookout for great histories of these intrepid reporters whose lives also happen to make for great reads.
Whenever I give a talk about Dickey Chapelle, I’m always asked why she did it. Why did she risk her life for so many years to cover conflict? I, too, wondered this same thing when I started writing about her, and in truth, I didn’t have a clue.
I began to turn to accounts by other women photojournalists for insight, and I found a great deal in this book. Like Chapelle, Addario has an incredible capacity to connect with those she photographs. There is a palpable sense of empathy in her work—and one that is not easily come by.
From Afghanistan to Iraq, Libya to Pakistan, Addario put herself in harm's way to capture the story—and she brought me as a reader right along with her. Through her lens, I was better able to see the geopolitical forces that shape individuals' lives, the stakes they face, and their bravery in…
“An unflinching memoir . . . [that] offers insight into international events and the challenges faced by the journalists who capture them.” —The Washington Post
War photographer Lynsey Addario’s memoir is the story of how the relentless pursuit of truth, in virtually every major theater of war in the twenty-first century, has shaped her life. What she does, with clarity, beauty, and candor, is to document, often in their most extreme moments, the complex lives of others. It’s her work, but it’s much more than that: it’s her singular calling.
Lynsey Addario was just finding her way as a young…
