Reviews

"The subjects of Freedman's photo biographies range from his 1988 Newbery Medal-winning Lincoln and his two Newbery Honor Books, Eleanor Roosevelt (1993) and The Wright Brothers (1991), which was also Booklist's Top of the List for youth nonfiction, to his stirring The Life and Death of Crazy Horse, a 1996 Booklist Editors' Choice. This is his first book about an artist, and, as always, he writes with eloquence and grace about the private person and her revolutionary public role. Martha Graham herself said that her life was her work, as dancer, teacher, and choreographer; and Freedman's focus is on how she created a thrilling new modern dance language that connected movement with emotion, how she made visible "all those feelings that you have inside you that you can't put words to." He connects her artistic breakthroughs with the social and cultural history of her time, the political and artistic rebellion that challenged the role of women and the formality of ballet. In discussing ind