Word: lionni
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
PARALLEL BOTANY by Leo Lionni...
...chimera, the griffin, the manticore and the sphinx are familiar fauna that flourish outside traditional biology. Now it appears that unfamiliar flora grow outside of conventional botany. Or so says the protean Leo Lionni, 67, teacher, painter, sculptor, former art director of FORTUNE and author of a dozen delightful children's books. To illustrate, Lionni has literalized Marianne Moore's "imaginary gardens with real toads in them"-and then removed the toads. What remains is a series of never-were "parallel plants," a vegetable kingdom with members rooted beyond the fences of nature and logic...
...Pezzettino (Pantheon; $4.95), Leo Lionni manages a feat of Klee: his collages and swirls of paint evoke the sensations of childhood. Pezzettino is a minuscule symbol, and all his friends are large, adventurous ones-until the boy sails off to the isle of Wham. The result is a pleasing metaphor for growing pains, and a consolation for that temporary period when the very young are dwarfed by parents, siblings, and sometimes life itself...
Theodore and the Talking Mushroom by Leo Lionni. Unpaged. Pantheon. $3.95. A mouse with an inferiority complex uses a mysterious mushroom for an Adlerian power play that fails. Leo Lionni is a well-known designer and ex-art director, whose collages, this time out, would scare a hoptoad. But anyone who figured that a talking mushroom would just naturally say "quirp" isn't to be lightly overlooked...
ALEXANDER AND THE WIND-UP MOUSE, by Leo Lionni (Pantheon; $3.95). A toybox parable for an automated age tells how a real mouse named Alexander yearns to be like his wind-up friend Willie-until he learns that children are fickle and mechanical toys grow obsolete...