Book Beat by Frank Lipsius

The arts are not always pretty. The youngest readers learn this lesson in Fartiste: An Explosively Funny, Mostly True Story by Kathleen Krull and Paul Brewer (Simon & Schuster, $16.99). In a sing-songy rhyme the authors tell the story of Joe Pujol, who could break wind at will, a skill he parlayed into a stage career.

Older readers will learn the hard work required of artistic skill in the life of Fred Astaire and his original dancing partner, his sister Adele, in Roxane Orgill’s biography, Footwork: The Story of Fred and Adele Astaire, illustrated by Stephane Jorisch (Candlewick, $17.99). Besides the hard work, readers learn about the vicissitudes of a career and the need to reinvent yourself, especially when the dancing you started at 5 years old evolves into a lifelong career.

The oldest readers, including adults if they have the fortitude for it, can ponder the role of the arts in Michael Morpurco’s The Mozart Question with illustrations by Michael Foreman (Candlewick, $15.99). It is the story of three musicians who saved themselves by playing Mozart at the entrance to their concentration camp for victims just getting off the train. As sensitively as the author tells the story, it still creates its squeamish moments about a world you would rather not know ever existed. If you think this tragic story needs retelling, this does it for as young a group as seems capable of understanding what occurred.

Art is not pretty in much lighter ways as well, as in the collage art that recycles everyday products or makes variations on Cubist figures. It is clever and can be creative and is encouraged by books such as An Artist’s America by Michael Albert (Henry Holt, $17.95). The author is a young collage creator who takes Cheerio boxes and other detritus of the modern world to make collages that look like fractured versions of their original shapes.

Collage It (Silver Dophin, $16.95) gives aspiring artists containers of glue and paper to imitate the Cubists in an interactive lesson in modern art for 8-year-olds and older.

Art can be pretty and when it is, as on display in the highly illustrated, coffee-table size A History of Western Art: From Prehistory to the 20th Century (Abrams, $22.50) by An--thony Mason, it shows off the huge variety and development of European art, divided by subjects and sub-subjects. The glories of the High Renaissance fill 20 illustrated pages, divided by easily understood groupings such as Painting in Italy and Painting in the North, alongside full pages (or two) of artists, from Michelangelo to Rembrandt.

The book would be a good high school companion for any student who might start using it as a reference and eventually try reading the sections and be drawn into the rich and diverse styles. This book proves that when it is pretty, it can be very, very pretty.

Frank Lipsius is a contributing writer to MetroKids.