Yuyi Morales

 

Our Author of the Month for October is Yuyi Morales. Yuyi (pronounced Juji) was born and raised in Mexico. She immigrated to the United States at the age of 24, not knowing a single word of English. Today she is known for her beautiful stories and illustrations - in both English and Spanish – that celebrate Hispanic culture and heritage.

As part of their Hispanic Heritage Month studies, Mrs. Murphy's class will analyze Yuyi Morales' artwork. They visited the media center last week for an introduction. The visit began with the students making 1 minute observations about her picture books. I was impressed with what they noticed about the illustrations: bright colors are used to convey emotion; many books show mothers and children; she uses paint and collage in her artwork; there are words in English and Spanish; many books have skeletons.

 We watched a video clip of Yuyi discussing how folktales and fables from her culture influence her work. Sharing stories was an important part of her childhood and it influences the way she writes/illustrates today.

Next I gave students 1 of Yuyi's books to analyze the artwork. For this first exercise, students were not supposed to read the story (this will come later!)--we wanted them to focus solely on the illustrations. Students worked collaboratively with their partner or group to answer questions such as:

What do you notice about the colors in the book?
What artistic medium do you think Yuyi used to create the illustrations?
Do you notice any items that come from the Mexican culture?
Without actually reading the story, please summarize it based on the artwork.

We ended by sharing some of our observations (we noticed many similarities among the books) and we watched a clip of Yuyi Morales making the illustrations for My Abuelita by Tony Johnston. We learned that it took her 3 years to complete the artwork! With photographs taken over a period of three years, and ranging from the construction of armatures, sculpting, felting, sewing, staging, photography, painting, and digital work, here is a look at the making of illustrations of My Abuelita:

 

Making My Abuelita from Yuyi Morales on Vimeo.