Bound To Stay Bound

School Library Journal - 07/01/2013 K-Gr 4—Collage master Piven returns with another book intended to spark the imagination. He starts by asking readers to find everyday objects that have "faces waiting to be discovered," such as a bathroom sink. (Think of the faucets as eyes, the spout as a nose, and the basin as a mouth.) On the next spread, children are told to look carefully at a seemingly random array of fruits, vegetables, and other foods to see if they can find faces. The following pages reveal what could be perceived as two faces from that mix. After similar exercises using tools from the garage and plant remnants from the garden, the author encourages readers to start gathering their own stuff from which they can create faces. He gives a few more examples, using found items like an old slipper, Scrabble tiles, beads, and broken toy parts. Two pages of tips and the advice to "play, play, play" and have fun follow. The digital photo spreads are captioned with large type and colorful refrigerator magnet letters, which emphasize the lively nature of the book. Although the concept of using found objects to create collage pictures is not new, Piven helps budding artists by focusing on the familiar configuration of a face. Fans of his previous books can look to those for additional ideas. Useful for arts and crafts lessons at school, in the library, or at home.—Martha Simpson, Stratford Library Association, CT - Copyright 2013 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Booklist - 08/01/2013 An artist with an eye for making facial features from unexpected objects, Piven creates collage art for magazines, picture books, and apps. This simple, well-designed book begins by encouraging viewers to recognize faces in the inanimate world around them (a cup lid, an electrical outlet, a toilet-paper holder). Next lesson: how to look at vegetables, fruits, and tools and see potential eyes, brows, noses, and mouths. The biggest step is to gather “more stuff!” and arrange the objects to become expressive faces. After many pages of examples, such as “a monster face,” “a scared face,” and “a mommy face,” the final spread offers additional bits of advice and encouragement. The faces, one per page, show up vividly against the solid-color backgrounds in this upbeat introduction to hands-on art. Readers looking for further inspiration may want to try Piven’s What Are Presidents Made Of? (2004) and What Are Athletes Made Of? (2006) as well as books on found art, such as Mil Niepold and Jeanyves Verdu’s Oooh! Picasso (2009). - Copyright 2013 Booklist.