Parker Looks Up
An Extraordinary Moment
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- £7.99
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
A New York Times bestseller!
A visit to Washington, DC’s National Portrait Gallery forever alters Parker Curry’s young life when she views First Lady Michelle Obama’s portrait.
When Parker Curry came face-to-face with Amy Sherald’s transcendent portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama at the National Portrait Gallery, she didn’t just see the First Lady of the United States. She saw a queen—one with dynamic self-assurance, regality, beauty, and truth who captured this young girl’s imagination. When a nearby museum-goer snapped a photo of a mesmerized Parker, it became an internet sensation. Inspired by this visit, Parker, and her mother, Jessica Curry, tell the story of a young girl and her family, whose trip to a museum becomes an extraordinary moment, in a moving picture book.
Parker Looks Up follows Parker, along with her baby sister and her mother, and her best friend Gia and Gia’s mother, as they walk the halls of a museum, seeing paintings of everyone and everything from George Washington Carver to Frida Kahlo, exotic flowers to graceful ballerinas. Then, Parker walks by Sherald’s portrait of Michelle Obama…and almost passes it. But she stops...and looks up!
Parker saw the possibility and promise, the hopes and dreams of herself in this powerful painting of Michelle Obama. An everyday moment became an extraordinary one…that continues to resonate its power, inspiration, and indelible impact. Because, as Jessica Curry said, “anything is possible regardless of race, class, or gender.”
**FOREWORD BY ARTIST AMY SHERALD**
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mother/daughter collaborators Jessica, a blogger, and four-year-old Parker unspool this story of an African-American girl's powerful experience with portraiture from the family's real-life museum visit. Ballerina Parker loves dance class, but when her mother suggests they head to the museum one day, the two and little sister Ava fasten their coats, splash through puddles on their way to Washington, D.C.'s National Portrait Gallery, and meet up with a friend, instead. With fast-paced curiosity, they view myriad famous works, reproduced throughout, until, on the way out, Amy Sherald's statuesque portrait of Michelle Obama brings Parker to a full stop, wide-eyed and "spellbound" in Jackson's digital art. The viewing sparks a change as Parker sees herself represented, feels "powerful and strong, and... inside she was dancing" as she contemplates "a road before her with new possibilities." The anecdotal narrative is a bit loose in places, but the creators' conceit that representation makes all the difference is profound. Ages 4 8.
