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Born in northwest Louisiana in 1886. Called Tebé by her family, Hunter lived and worked on Melrose Plantation for more than 75 years. In colors as bright as the Louisiana sky, she shows the backbreaking work required to pick cotton, gather figs, cut sugar cane, and harvest pecans. Tebé's art portrays the good times, too. Scenes of baptisms, weddings, and church socials celebrate a rich community life that helped the workers survive. Hunter's work holds a special place in art history. She was the first self-taught artist to receive a fellowship from the Rosenwald Fund, in 1945, and the first self-taught African-American woman artist to receive national media attention. Between 1945 and 1987, over fifty museums and galleries showed her works. Some writers have called Clementine Hunter a creative genius. To others she was not a real artist but a "plantation Negro." Many were surprised that an older woman with no training could produce art at all. Now considered one of the finest folk arti

The author of fifteen books for young readers, Mary Lyons lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with her husband, Paul. Her grandfather was born in Ireland in 1869, in a place much like Knockabeg.

Gr 4 Up-Clementine Hunter was an African-American primitive painter who lived all of her 101 years in Louisiana as a manual laborer. Born in 1886, she began painting late in her life. Although untrained, she created works of art now owned by many American museums. The story of her life and art is fascinating, and Lyons has let Tebé, as she was called, tell it in her own words, culled from taped interviews and magazine and newspaper articles. Each short chapter is a well-put-together collection of her pithy comments on some facet of her daily life on Melrose Plantation ("My People," "Housework," "Field Work," etc.). Hunter's bright, colorful, childlike paintings and a handful of black-and-white photographs decorate the book and illuminate her words. The result is an attractive and appealing volume. Its strength is its wonderful depiction of an extraordinary individual who could not read or write, who lived in the same place all of her life, but was nationally known and respected. The book would serve every collection as an excellent biography of a strong woman, as insight into an artist's vision and work, and as a unique slice of Southern history.-Judith Constantinides, East Baton Rouge Parish Main Library, LA Copyright 1998 School Library Journal Reviews