What a Book Can Hold: Kyo Maclear's Picture Book Biography of Gyo Fujikawa

A couple of months ago, I posted about Gyo Fujikawa's work and how her bright, inclusive books, created all the way back in 1963, contained a subtle call to the world to become kinder and better, to treat all children alike.Now Kyo Maclear's beautiful picture book biography of Gyo Fujikawa offers another loving tribute to an artist who was far ahead of her own time.Consider the title. It Began With a Page: How Gyo Fujikawa Drew the Way.It began with a page. That is how the book opens as well:[gallery ids="15435,15436" type="rectangular"]Look to the right and the eye falls on little Gyo, five years old in 1913 and sketching away as her mother writes a poem, rendered in sweet bare-toed concentration by illustrator Julie Morstad.It's a dual kind of looking--back in time to the story's chronology, yet capturing the  immediacy of the child's reaction to the events of her life. Yet somehow, in the space between image and word, the book manages to leap forward as well, showing by example how art can heal and illuminate. At the same time, it recognizes the family's aspirations and disappointments and the enormous tragedy of the prison camps that incarcerated Japanese Americans during World War II.And then it shows us who that child grew into, and what imagination looks like:

At the library and bookshop, it was the same old stories--mothers in aprons and fathers with pipes and a world of only white children.Gyo knew a book could hold more and do more.

It Began With a Page is a rich evocation of a life that offers direction in our own challenging present and reminds us that equality remains an urgent cause. As Maclear puts it:

...babies cannot wait.