How to Love the Whole World: A Story About Artist Agnes Martin
by Henry Martin; illus. by Shelley Hampe
Primary    Cameron/Abrams    40 pp.
2/25    9781949480535    $19.99
e-book ed.  9798887073415    $17.99

Canadian American artist Agnes Martin (1912–2004) loved the natural world, feeling complete when a part of it: “Today I feel happiness. Today I feel gratitude. Today I love the whole world.” In her early years, she experimented with found objects, including beads, wood, and other discarded materials. Her perceived failures frustrated her, and she “put many into a bonfire.” Martin’s travels led her to draw more and more lines, weaving them together in patterns until they tightened into grids. Pink, blue, and shimmering gold, her gridded canvases did not receive from the outside world the same love she had put into them, and she pulled back into herself, away from the criticism and into solitude. After some time, a game of hopscotch outside her window opened her perspective about line and order, sending her into a newfound love for her own voice as an artist and the world that she painted. The page layout is spacious, its spareness making this picture book less a detailed account of Martin’s life and more a reflection of a restrained approach to creative work. Back matter sheds a bit more light on the artist, her influence, and her legacy.

From the March/April 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.