Can You Imagine?

November 25, 2024
The creators of this artful biography of activist and artist Yoko Ono (b. 1933) underline the life of a person who never loses her sense of self. Growing up in a wealthy, artistic family, Ono felt lonely and misunderstood, but her prodigious imagination brought solace amid displacement, neglect, prejudice, and war.
She became a pioneer in performance art, breaking boundaries between artist and audience, described in these pages in frank but approachable terms. Marriage to John Lennon unleashes public vitriol: “People say Yoko’s art is strange and her music is not very good,” Tolin writes; “Worse, they say she is breaking up the Beatles. They don’t even like the way she looks.” But Ono “knows how to pick herself up,” and keeps making her dreams into art following Lennon’s death. Mural-like gouache and watercolor images by Imamura match the text’s blend of reportorial and poetic, forming a fitting tribute to an artist who is both unrepentantly idealistic and unmistakably tough-minded. More about Ono and an author’s note conclude. Ages 4–8.

December 1, 2024
A revealing profile of "the world's most famous unknown artist," as her iconic husband put it. A critic quoted in the afterword echoes that sentiment, claiming that Yoko Ono's "fame made her almost impossible to see." Making a brave effort to look past that glare of publicity, Tolin begins with Ono's childhood imaginings of better relationships with her distant parents and ends with her 2007 "Imagine Peace Tower"; the afterword describes her 2013 "Imagine There's No Hunger" initiative. A clear theme emerges in this sympathetic overview of her long career. Rather than making her subject's relationship with John Lennon the center of her story, the author offers enough coverage of those years to assert that the attraction was mutual, reject the notion that the Beatles' breakup was her fault, and highlight the strength of character it took to weather all the opprobrium. Instead, Tolin focuses on the development of Ono's idealistic artistic sensibility and descriptions of some of her less controversial works. Imamura's swirling gouache and watercolor scenes mingle figurative and fanciful images, leaving Ono wreathed in stars and dovelike bundles of paper slips representing wishes for peace. "Slowly, the world turns in her direction," the author writes--an assertion that may be arguable but will at least encourage dreamers to imagine that they're not the only ones. Fresh, perceptive, and worthy of attention. (the art of Yoko Ono, author's note, photos, select bibliography)(Picture-book biography. 7-9)

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