The Boy Who Bit Picasso

The Boy Who Bit Picasso

by Antony Penrose

photographs by Lee Miller

artwork by Picasso

"I couldn't speak French or Spanish, but it didn't matter at all because we didn't need a language for our games. Picasso was great fun to play with. He liked to romp around on the floor and have pretend bullfights. His tweed jacket was nice and scratchy. He smelled good, too. He smelled of cologne and French tobacco" (17).

Before I read this book, I had no idea who Antony Penrose was. A child, friends with Picasso?! Wasn't he kind of an eccentric man who wasn't friends with many people? Turns out that, while "he got very upset with adults if they touched anything" that he was working on in his home in southern France, he loved letting children tinker with his artwork and items in his house (37). Turns out that Antony Penrose, son of famous model and photographer Lee Miller and surrealist painter Roland Penrose, who were friends of Picasso, is now a writer who has spent a lot of time publishing his mother's photographs, developing the Lee Miller Archive, and crafting this book and The Lives of Lee Miller, and upholding his parents' legacies .

This book is different from the other picture books I've examined because it contains a combination of photographs by Tony's mother, creative maps, and inserts of Picasso's art. The text is set on bright colors that contrast with Miller's black-and-white photographs, and the author varies the font styles to emphasize certain words. For example, in the sentence "He was always experimenting, always inventing, always making things," the word "experimenting" is larger and in a squiggly shape, which reminded me of the motion of a roller coaster, which invokes excitement and risk-taking. On the next page, he messes with the fonts of "junk" and "art," in the sentence "He made them from junk, which he transformed into art," emphasizing the relationship between the two. This concept that art can result from junk is intriguing for children, pushes their imagination and creativity, and shows them how easily they too can be artists: they don't have to have the best and most expensive materials to do so.

As a French major, I was personally delighted with this book as it described Picasso's various homes and movement around southern France. I laughed out loud when I read the scene after which the book is titled: "I don't remember this, but Mom told everyone that one day, when we were playing, I got overexcited and I naughtily bit Picasso. Picasso turned around and bit me right back--hard! Just before I started to yell, Mom heard Picasso say, in French, "Gosh! that's the first Englishman I've ever bitten!" (19). Penrose sets this scene apart by putting it in larger font than the rest of the book, with a bright orange two-page spread background, accentuated with drawings created by children, rather than Miller's photographs or Picasso's artwork.

I loved how the author discussed Picasso's creative process in this book and feel that it would be especially interesting to young readers, who may be aspiring artists at their age. For example, "Picasso did not often use precious materials like gold or silver. Instead he used the things he found around him--things you might see in your garden or kitchen at home. He made this baby out of bits of broken pots" (30). And, "I did see the sculpture Picasso made of a monkey mother with a baby. Take a look at the mother's face. Can you see what Picasso used to make it? He used Claude [his son]'s toy car" (33).

Finally, I loved the concluding paragraph of Penrose's book because he connects to the lives of young readers by suggesting that artists really are ordinary people and more accessible than you may think: "Today he is one of the most famous artists in the world...but to me he will always be my extraordinary friend, and I hope he is now yours, too" (47).

Check Out these links!

Interview in which Antony Penrose talks about the time he bit Picasso:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/aug/22/picasso-lee-miller-tony-penrose

Video interview with Antony Penrose about life growing up on the Farley Farmhouse:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PObp0I5U5fs