Here are 100 books that Emily Carr fans have personally recommended if you like
Emily Carr.
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I'm passionate about nature, our impact on it and the people who best know how to be its companion – Indigenous peoples. I grew up on B.C.'s west coast, swimming with seals and otters. That inspires me to protect the land and to write and draw about it.
As the author/illustrator of over 70 books I've been lucky to be able to present my thoughts on many topics. I learned early on to do my research and work with rigorous editors. With P'eska, I relied on members of the community I wrote about. I know I'm speaking to young kids so honesty is paramount.
Recommending kid's books means I'll be doing a bit of reminiscing and this book leads the pack.
As a child I'd float my toy boats down the stream and it was always an adventure to see what animals and plant life I met. This book does the same thing. The parade of animals and the sing-song story is a perfect vehicle for young readers to discover the world as a place to protect, enjoy, and involve yourself in.
As with all good kids books, there is an essential balance between the story and the illustrations. Both creators invite readers into a new world where Bob builds a boat and takes us along for a ride.
A humorous exploration of a northern river ecosystem with an intrepid young boatsman is paired with an extended author's note about its ecology and key species.
Young Ben sets out to explore the river equipped with a sturdy boat, some sample-collection gear, and his scientific curiosity. Along the way he meets a black bear taking a swim, a moose all wobbly and slim, a goose with a gorgeous grin, and a heron all proper and prim...but things really start happening after the owl HOOs loudly on a whim.
With fresh, easygoing verse from author Jen Lynn Bailey and art full…
Twelve-year-old identical twins Ellie and Kat accidentally trigger their physicist mom’s unfinished time machine, launching themselves into a high-stakes adventure in 1970 Chicago. If they learn how to join forces and keep time travel out of the wrong hands, they might be able find a way home. Ellie’s gymnastics and…
I'm passionate about nature, our impact on it and the people who best know how to be its companion – Indigenous peoples. I grew up on B.C.'s west coast, swimming with seals and otters. That inspires me to protect the land and to write and draw about it.
As the author/illustrator of over 70 books I've been lucky to be able to present my thoughts on many topics. I learned early on to do my research and work with rigorous editors. With P'eska, I relied on members of the community I wrote about. I know I'm speaking to young kids so honesty is paramount.
I live on the West Coast of B.C., just like Deborah Hodge, so this book resonates with me.
The cover describes it as a Nature Alphabet book. It's that and much more. Each letter is followed by a description of different life forms found on the shore or in the sea. And that's what makes it special for me, there's a balance of recognition and discovery.
Reading the poetic writing and looking at the painterly illustration brings me back to my childhood turning over rocks, discovering starfish and clams in the endless tidal pools. Again what makes this book work is the perfect balance of art and words.
Celebrate the Pacific west coast with this gorgeous nature alphabet book.
This stunning nature alphabet book explores the fascinating ecosystem of the Pacific west coast - a magnificent area that combines an ancient rainforest, a rugged beach and a vast, open ocean, and where whales, bears, wolves, eagles and a rich variety of marine species thrive in an interconnected web of life.
Author Deborah Hodge has spent more than forty years on the west coast, frequently visiting the Pacific Rim region, and she knows it intimately. From A to Z she describes in vivid language the rainforest, ocean and beach,…
I'm passionate about nature, our impact on it and the people who best know how to be its companion – Indigenous peoples. I grew up on B.C.'s west coast, swimming with seals and otters. That inspires me to protect the land and to write and draw about it.
As the author/illustrator of over 70 books I've been lucky to be able to present my thoughts on many topics. I learned early on to do my research and work with rigorous editors. With P'eska, I relied on members of the community I wrote about. I know I'm speaking to young kids so honesty is paramount.
I wanted to include a board book in my recommendations because finding books that speak to pre-schoolers is a real gift.
Roy Henry Vickers, a well-known First Nations artist, employs warm colours and clear simple shapes to convey his love for animals, the land, and his culture. Words are used sparingly which makes us enjoy their sound. The story reads like in a poem, it's a sensory experience. Every page is a new setting, often with Indigenous imagery worked in.
Raven Squawk, Orca Squeak feels like an invitation to come and visit.
With bright and bold illustrations by celebrated Indigenous artist Roy Henry Vickers, this sturdy board book introduces iconic sounds of the West Coast and supports the language development of babies and toddlers. From the “geek geek” of the eagle, to the creak and rustle of cedar branches in the wind, to the sacred drumming of a potlatch and the crashing waves of the Pacific Ocean, the rhythmic text, vibrant illustrations and glossy tactile finish of Raven Squawk, Orca Squeak will delight the very youngest readers.
Twelve-year-old identical twins Ellie and Kat accidentally trigger their physicist mom’s unfinished time machine, launching themselves into a high-stakes adventure in 1970 Chicago. If they learn how to join forces and keep time travel out of the wrong hands, they might be able find a way home. Ellie’s gymnastics and…
I'm passionate about nature, our impact on it and the people who best know how to be its companion – Indigenous peoples. I grew up on B.C.'s west coast, swimming with seals and otters. That inspires me to protect the land and to write and draw about it.
As the author/illustrator of over 70 books I've been lucky to be able to present my thoughts on many topics. I learned early on to do my research and work with rigorous editors. With P'eska, I relied on members of the community I wrote about. I know I'm speaking to young kids so honesty is paramount.
This might be a bit of a stretch from the others in my list but I wanted to include it because it's inspirational to me as a creator.
It takes place on the West Coast and it champions living with the sea and surroundings. There is a long history of tugboats in BC and it was something I grew up watching (and waving at as they chugged by). Even as a kid I was amazed that such a tiny boat could achieve so much. It was also an inspiration for one of my books (Tug, a Log Booms Journey) about the fascinating world of logging and tugboats.
This follow-up to the bestselling book Fishing with Gubby (Harbour Publishing, 2010) continues the adventures of Gubby, a commercial salmon fisherman, who heads home to his village on the Sunshine Coast at the end of another long season. His beloved old boat, the Flounder, is worn out and he commissions a Japanese-Canadian boat builder in historic Steveston to build him a new one. The story follows the stages of building a boat from selecting plans to preparing the wood to laying the keel to final finishing and launching.
Combining the masterful storytelling of Gary Kent and the striking illustrations of…
I’m the descendant of three generations of visual artists, a gene I thought had skipped me. However, art popped up in many of my stories when I started writing fiction. In 2012, I published The Life Story of a Chilean Sea Blob, and to promote it, I launched a street art campaign that included putting plaster blobs on the streets of Washington, D.C. This blossomed into several other street art projects and earned attention from The Washington Postand several D.C. TV news stations. My next two books centered around Frida Kahlo and Edvard Munch.
In trademark Vonnegut fashion, Bluebeard uses humor to juxtapose the horror and violence of World War II. In this way, it is similar to Slaughterhouse-Five.
However, Vonnegut skewers the art movement born out of the war’s aftermath: abstract expressionism. Bluebeard is the story of Rabo Karabekian (who first appeared in Breakfast of Champions), a war veteran and failed illustrator who accidentally found success as a contemporary of Rothko and Pollock. At the end of his life, he’s ready to unveil one final secret locked away in a damp potato barn.
“Ranks with Vonnegut’s best and goes one step beyond . . . joyous, soaring fiction.”—The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
Broad humor and bitter irony collide in this fictional autobiography of Rabo Karabekian, who, at age seventy-one, wants to be left alone on his Long Island estate with the secret he has locked inside his potato barn. But then a voluptuous young widow badgers Rabo into telling his life story—and Vonnegut in turn tells us the plain, heart-hammering truth about man’s careless fancy to create or destroy what he loves.
Praise for Bluebeard
“Vonnegut is at his edifying best.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer…
Like many readers, I am fascinated by strong creative women in the past and how their lives can inspire women today. As an academic, before my Creative Writing Diploma and transformation into a creative writer, I taught historical novels of many kinds. I now enjoy devising fascinating women whose lives have significance for today’s issues. To talk about my favourite writer Virginia Woolf and favourite artist Gwen John, I have enjoyed invitations from book festivals, galleries, and universities from around the world, including several in the US and Europe as well as Brazil, Egypt, Israel, Mexico, and Norway. BBC Radio, France Culture, and Turkey TRT television also featured my writing.
Letters to Gwen John is the artist’s mixture of memoir and fictional letters to Gwen John the artist.
Once a partner of the much older artist Lucian Freud, Paul’s life resembles Gwen’s love for the older French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Paul’s fictional letters provide moving insights into Paul’s life, Gwen’s life, and the role of art.
Uncannily Paul’s letters resemble Gwen’s to Rodin in their shared simplicity and devotion to art.
I just wish Paul’s book had been published before I wrote my book because Paul has so many insights into art techniques. 2023 is definitely Gwen’s year with the opening of the major exhibition of Gwen’s work at Pallant House Gallery, UK.
With original artworks throughout, an extraordinary fusion of memoir and artistic biography from the acclaimed artist and author of Self-Portrait.
Dearest Gwen, I know this letter to you is an artifice. I know you are dead and that I’m alive and that no usual communication is possible between us but, as my mother used to say, “Time is a strange substance” and who knows really, with our time-bound comprehension of the world, whether there might be some channel by which we can speak to each other, if we only knew how.
I’m an award-winning toy inventor and author/illustrator, with a lifelong love of art, learning, and creativity. I strive to inspire the future builders and creators of our world in my books, articles, and blog musings. Some of my favorite reads inspired my creative side.
When I first saw the previews of this book, I had to read it the first day it was published.
Though friends had highly recommended Kostova’s more popular book, The Historian, this book spoke to me.
With the point of view shifting from current time to 19th century France, it checked all my boxes: painting, art museum, impressionists - all tied together into a fabulous mystery bow.
While reading, I wanted to peacefully wander an art museum and dabble with a paintbrush on canvas.
To me, the best books evoke a unique artistic mist or glow that I can still feel years later.
Psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe has a perfectly ordered life - solitary, perhaps, but full of devotion to his profession and the painting hobby he loves. This order is destroyed when renowned painter Robert Oliver attacks a canvas in the National Gallery of Art and becomes his patient. Desperate to understand the secret that torments this genius, Marlowe embarks on a journey that leads him into the lives of the women closest to Oliver and a tragedy at the heart of French Impressionism. Kostova's masterful new novel travels from American cities to the coast of Normandy; from the late nineteenth century to…
Early in life, I felt the presence of a “guardian angel” who would take my hand and accompany my mind to imagine distant cultures. I grew up in Florence, and in our history, there were so many tales of people coming from afar, and of Florentines traveling across deserts and oceans. And as time passed, I would be drawn to beautifully written true stories which opened windows onto different epochs and dramas of life in both near and far-flung places of the world.
In this wondrous book on Caravaggio, the world of Naples unfolds from the inside through an electrifying reading experience. Written with grace, almost every sentence imparts an epiphany. The author challenges us to undertake soul-work, even if one is a secular reader. Reading becomes an act of empathy and passion. In the words of Wallace Stevens, potential readers will become ‘necessary angels’.
A Profound New Look at the Italian Master and His Lasting Legacy
Now celebrated as one of the great painters of the Renaissance, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio fled Rome in 1606 to escape retribution for killing a man in a brawl. Three years later he was in Naples, where he painted The Seven Acts of Mercy. A year later he died at the age of thirty-eight under mysterious circumstances. Exploring Caravaggio's singular masterwork, in The Guardian of Mercy Terence Ward offers an incredible narrative journey into the heart of his artistry and his metamorphosis from fugitive to visionary.
I have always loved reading biographies: we only get one life, but through stories of others’ lives we get to absorb into our own imagination their experiences and what they learned, or didn’t, from them. Having written poetry since childhood, I have long been an observer of myself and those around me, with a great curiosity about how people live and what motivates them. I’ve come to see that, no matter what genre I’m writing in, I’m driven to understand the connection between identity and place–for me, in particular, women in the southern U.S., and how each of us makes meaning out of the materials at hand.
I’ve been intrigued all my life by the women on my mother’s side of my family who were artists and writers. How did I fit into that familial line, and what could I learn from them?
Honor Moore’s investigation into her artist grandmother’s life drew me into her own examination of that question, and I was deeply moved by her mission of reviving her beautiful, brilliant grandmother’s reputation as an artist while offering an honest assessment of how societal pressures affected her mental health and problems with alcohol abuse.
Margarett Sargent was an icon of avant-garde art in the 1920s. In an evocative weave of biography and memoir, her granddaughter unearths for the first time the life of a spirited and gifted woman committed at all costs to self-expression.
I love a well-written historical fiction novel that immerses me in the time period and introduces a female character I can relate to. We may live in different times, but women in all eras feel love, attempt and fail, find strength, perform heroic deeds, suffer mishaps, and experience life. Escaping into their stories makes me question what I would have done in their shoes as well as think about how my own story is still being written. As a historical fiction author, I seek to create those relationships between my characters and readers.
I liked this historical fiction novel for many reasons. First, I recently visited Florence and was introduced to the story of the monk Savonarola, so I enjoyed the mentioned sights and historical context. Secondly, I appreciated the structure of the novel, with the main point of view being a young well-to-do woman married off to a much older man.
Through the conversations of husband and wife and those of the wife and her slave/maid, the political, religious, and societal events unfold. There's tension throughout as the rising puritanical tide overwhelms Florentine society.
Really well done and a fascinating story of the Renaissance.
Alessandra Cecchi is not quite fifteen when her father, a prosperous cloth merchant, brings a young painter back from northern Europe to decorate the chapel walls in the family’s Florentine palazzo. A child of the Renaissance, with a precocious mind and a talent for drawing, Alessandra is intoxicated by the painter’s abilities.
But their burgeoning relationship is interrupted when Alessandra’s parents arrange her marriage to a wealthy, much older man. Meanwhile, Florence is changing, increasingly subject to the growing suppression imposed by the fundamentalist monk Savonarola, who is seizing religious and political control. Alessandra and her native city are caught…
