This introduction to the artist Keith Haring for children 4 and up emphasizes Haring’s belief that “art is life” and “life is art,” phrases repeated throughout the book.

Illustrator Keith Negley fills the pages with squiggly forms reminiscent of Haring’s work, while the author explains that these shapes, applied with color chalk on walls everywhere by Haring, helped people “imagine and understand and laugh and cheer and clap their hands.”

The author includes in the text that Haring died at just 31 years old, although the cause of death is only given in the Author’s Note at the end of the book. But the author adds in the main narrative that “his art still surrounds us today - pictures that make people smile and laugh and cry and thng, drawings that buzz and whir and shout and whisper, paintings tat look simple but help us understand complicated ideas, art that inspires and inquires ad opens imaginations….” ( )