Yoko Ono: Collector of Skies

by Nell Beram, Carolyn Boriss-Krimsky

Overview

This lyrical biography explores the life and art of Yoko Ono, from her childhood haiku to her avant-garde visual art and experimental music. An outcast throughout most of her life, and misunderstood by every group she was supposed to belong to, Yoko always followed her own unique vision to create art that was ahead of its time and would later be celebrated. Her focus remained on being an artist, even when the rest of world saw her only as the wife of John Lennon. Yoko Ono’s moving story will inspire any young adult who has ever felt like an outsider, or who is developing or questioning ideas about being an artist, to follow their dreams and find beauty in all that surrounds them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781613125137
Publisher:	ABRAMS, Inc.
Publication date:	05/23/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	184
File size:	9 MB
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

Nell Beram is an editor and reviewer and a former columnist for the Horn Book. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Carolyn Boriss-Krimsky is a visual artist, arts writer, and playwright who published an article about Yoko Ono in Art New England. She lives in New York City and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 7 Up—This beautifully produced, comprehensive, and highly sympathetic biography of the artist covers her entire life, reporting her influences and her accomplishments, and bringing her out from behind the shadow of her famous husband. The broad facts are freely available around the Web, but here they've been organized roughly chronologically and presented in context with descriptions of works that presaged movements in music as well as visual and performance art. Divided into sections representing different life stages, the detailed narrative includes helpful historical background for modern teens and is written in a lively, often colloquial style. Endpapers with the words "Imagine Peace" in the 24 languages in which they are carved on the Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland will remind readers of two major themes of Ono's life. The book is liberally illustrated with photographs, but it will take a stretch of readers' own imaginations to understand just how ground- and taboo-breaking her art and life have been. The back matter includes a bibliography that reflects the authors' extensive research, which included an interview with the subject. For those who enjoyed Elizabeth Partridge's John Lennon: All I Want Is the Truth (Viking, 2005), this will be a must-read.—Kathleen Isaacs, Children's Literature Specialist, Pasadena, MD

School Library Journal

On the verge of her 80th birthday (Feb. 18, 2013), Ono steps out of her iconic late husband's shadow for a sympathetic profile. The authors present her as a groundbreaking creative artist whose work has been misunderstood, not to say derided, for decades and who was unjustly vilified as the woman who broke up the Beatles. They describe a comfortable upbringing in Japan and the United States, childhood experiences in World War II and artistic development as part of New York's avant-garde scene in the 1950s and early '60s. The book goes on to chronicle her relationships with various husbands, including "soul mate" John Lennon, and her two children, life as a peace-activist celebrity in the '70s, and (in much less detail) her activities, honors and exhibitions after Lennon's death. The account is occasionally trite ("Yoko and John were stressed to the max") or platitudinous, and it's unlikely to persuade younger (or any) readers to appreciate Yoko's creations--which run to works like an 80-minute film of naked rumps walking by and sets of chess pieces that are all the same color--as great art. Nevertheless, it does impart a good sense of conceptual and performance art's purposes and expressions along with a detailed portrait of a complex woman who for several reasons has a significant place in our cultural history. Even rabid fans of Lennon or the 1960s will find new information and angles in this searching study. (photos, timeline to 2009, resource lists) (Biography. 12-15)

Kirkus Reviews