Love Is Hard Work: The Art and Heart of Corita Kent
by Dan Paley; illus. by Victoria Tentler-Krylov
Primary, Intermediate    Candlewick    40 pp.
11/24    9781536220322    $18.99

It only takes a “little heart” to make a big impact, and so tells the story of artist and religious sister Corita Kent (1918–1986). As a child, Frances Elizabeth Kent wanted to push away from the Old Masters taught in her art class and move toward something new in her creative expression. Once she joined the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, she became free to do just that, combining her religious devotion with her love for making art. She took on her new name—Sister Mary Corita, meaning “little heart”—and a new career as an art teacher, and urged innovation not only in artistic style but in the very way her students looked at the world around them, even creating “finders” through which they could isolate a visual experience. She challenged perceptions of artistic methods, styles, and even art’s purpose, using the pop art of mid-century advertisements in her work to persuade people toward higher ideals and to protest injustices such as war, poverty, racism, and hunger. In the spirit of Kent’s own work, text in varying sizes, shapes, colors, and fonts appears throughout the narrative and within the book’s vibrant watercolor illustrations. An author’s note and selected sources give readers an opportunity to learn even more. Paley and Tentler-Krylov deliver a compelling and sumptuous depiction of the life and work of a seminal figure in American art. Pair with Winter’s Sister Corita’s Words and Shapes (rev. 9/21) and Rockliff’s Signs of Hope (rev. 5/24).

From the ">November/December 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.