Roots and Wings: How Shahzia Sikander Became an Artist

Description

Young Shahzia lives in a multigenerational, multicultural home in Lahore, Pakistan. She sees bustling crowds and vibrant energy everywhere she looks. She enjoys the food, rituals, and love of her large extended family's Muslim traditions while soaking up the world around her through Russian fairy tales, American Westerns, and Bollywood films. She also reads poetry in Urdu, her own language, and learns the slow and detailed painting technique of Indo-Persian miniatures. Her art takes her around the world, and she brings her roots with her. Roots and Wings is a deeply personal story about how an artist grows. It is based on the childhood of Shahzia Sikander, one of the most exciting and celebrated artists working today.

Shahzia Sikander (b. 1969) is a Pakistani-born and internationally recognized artist whose work is in the collections of major museums around the world. She lives in New York. Amy Novesky is a children's book editor and author who lives just north of San Francisco. Hanna Barczyk is a widely published illustrator who lives in New York and Toronto.

"The accomplished illustrator Hanna Barczyk, in her debut English-language picture book, gives the story a convincing, personal interpretation . . . Barczyk manages to stay beautifully true to her own style. Her paintings -- a digitally assembled mix of ink, gouache and acrylic -- have an appealing fanciful quality even when depicting realistic scenes, and the carefully balanced blend of warm and cool colors gives the book a satisfying unity."-- "The New York Times Book Review"