Vincent Paints His House

K-Gr 2— In Vincent Paints His House, Arnold uses van Gogh's famous relationship to color as the point of entry for young readers; the artist can't make up his mind what color he likes best. "White is nice," he says. But the creatures around the house soon make their opinions known; the spider likes red, the caterpillar likes yellow, and so on. The result is a house painted all the colors, and "everyone was happy." The final page shows the house as an element of van Gogh's famous painting Starry Night. Arnold manages to infuse van Gogh's brush strokes and palette into his own distinctive art style and the mash-up offers a successful introduction to the painter, though he limits his audience with its simplicity. Art teachers may find this book a useful tool, and fans of Arnold's other work will welcome another opportunity for easy reading and deep looking. More insight into van Gogh's color sense can be found in the well-received Vincent's Colors (Chronicle, 2005), and Laurence Anholt's Van Gogh and the Sunflowers (Eerdmans, 2011) is an age-appropriate biographical story.