Bluebonnet Book: Emily's Blue Period

Title: Emily's Blue Period 

Author: Cathleen Daly
Illustrator:  Lisa Brown

Genre:  Realistic Fiction 

Major Awards: 2015-2016 Texas Bluebonnet Award Nominee 
Age Group: 7-10 years old

Emily wants to be an artist someday and is inspired by Pablo Picasso and artist she’s learning about in her school. Emily admires Pablo Picasso so much she wants to change her name to a longer name just to replicate the length of Picasso’s legal name. Picasso was a cubist and loved to experiment with shapes to create unique images and mix things up and Emily liked to do the same. One “mix up” Emily doesn’t like as much is that her dad is no longer living in the house with them. This fact hits Emily and her brother really hard and just like Picasso, Emily enters into her blue period. Her mother even got a call from the teacher that Emily refused to do her art project today because there were working with charcoal instead of blue, and her blue period lasted for quite a while. In class Emily’s art teacher says that they will be working with collage which was an art form Picasso often liked to use. The students were tasked with creating a collage of their home. Emily was conflicted by the assignment because she has two homes and didn’t know whether to do a collage of her mom’s house or her dad's house. During dinner that night she brought up the question to her mom as to which house was her home. Her brother interjected and said he had once seen something say, “Home is where the heart is”. These words inspired Emily and she went on to make a beautiful collage of a heart with her mom, dad, brother, and best friend represented, because home is more than a building it’s the people in your life.

Emily’s Blue Period was a sad yet beautiful story that would make an excellent addition to any 2^nd -5^th grade classroom library. Even if the book were not in a classroom lesson, I think it’s a wonderful book to include in a classroom library. The book deals with the topic of divorce and could perhaps be helpful for students who are experiencing similar changes in their family. I really appreciated the way the book handled the situation, because although it did not explicitly say divorce, it instead described how it felt, the family shifts, having two houses and not knowing which one is home, which I believe are topics and feelings students may be able to relate and identify with. Another aspect of the book that I found really interesting is all of the information about Picasso. I think in relation to the story and Emily’s connection with Picasso, students could do an artist study and explore the works and art styles of Pablo Picasso and in the end perhaps make a collage just like Emily did.