Rosenstock, Barb.
THE NOISY PAINT BOX : THE COLORS AND SOUNDS OF KANDINSKY'S ABSTRACT ART
New York : Knopf, 2014
IL K-3, RL 3.6
ISBN 0307978486

(3 booktalks)

Booktalk #1

When Vasily Kandinsky was given his first paint box, he had an experience that most of us cannot understand.  The colors swirled together in his mind and he could hear music playing.  He tried to understand the world as others saw it but he just couldn't.  He suffered from a condition that made him hear colors and see sounds.  Try as he might to learn to paint the way others did, he couldn't.  And he became one of the first abstract painters of his time.

Booktalk #2

Vasily Kandinsky was a pioneer of abstract painting, but as a child he was encouraged to be serious about his studies.  He studied to become a lawyer and put his childhood hobby of painting aside.  He had an unusual condition that allowed him to experience music and sounds visually: in addition to hearing sounds, he also saw them as colors.  Read The Noisy Paint Box to find out how this condition led him to return to his childhood interest and invent a whole new style of painting.  (Booktalk by Pennsylvania Young Reader’s Choice Award Committee)

Booktalk #3

When he opens his paint box, a young boy is captivated not only by the look of the paints’ colors but by their sounds, an experience he soon learns is unique. Synesthesia shapes Vasya Kandinsky’s artistic style and eventually leads him to follow his heart and share his love of abstract art with the world.   (Booktalk by the Louisiana Young Readers' Choice Committee)