Princess Arabella at the Museum - by Mylo Freeman (Hardcover)

About the Book

Translation of: Prinses Arabella in het museum.

Book Synopsis

Princess Arabella and her friends go to the museum. There are works of different artists exhibited: some are big and others are small. In some works you can lose yourself and others make you smile. Then the children want to go home. Why? Because they want to make their own work of art!

Review Quotes

Mylo Freeman's "Princess Arabella at the Museum" (her sixth book about the princess) also braids the lines between inside and outside. Arabella invites her prince and princess friends to her "very own" museum, which from the outside looks like Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao, if it were shaped like an elephant, and from the inside feels like a tour through a brilliant child's mind.

--Sabrina Orah Mark "The New York Times"

Art appreciation from the lens of royal Black childhood--beautiful!

In Freeman's latest Princess Arabella book, this young Black princess gives her royal friends a tour of her very own museum. Unlike the Louvre, Princess Arabella's museum seems to attract more children than adults, features many hands-on exhibits, and displays art that relates to the princess's family. Portraits of Princess Arabella and her mother attract the attention of her regal friends because both have blue faces. Princess Ling calls this "strange" while Prince Jonas declares it "magnificent." Princess Naomi says she recognizes Arabella as the subject of these portraits, regardless of skin color. The Worhol-esque endpapers even foreshadow this conversation, depicting Arabella with blue, red, pink, green, purple, and orange skin. And indeed, the wonderfully stylized images of Princess Arabella's unique hairdo, which Freeman creates with increasingly smaller unconnected circles that give the essence of five pigtails, make her unmistakable. Other museum exhibits include huge, colorful dotted pumpkins like Yayoi Kusama's, a giant spider that recalls Louise Bourgeois' Maman, one dog inspired by Jeff Koons and another by Keith Haring, and a portrait of her parents reminiscent of Kehinde Wiley's portraits of the Obamas. Docent Arabella, wearing her Mondrian-inspired dress, concludes the gathering with tasty treats and enjoys the children's excitement for making their own amazing artwork. Like the other Princess Arabella books, this one features a cast of multicultural characters from different, though unspecified, countries. Art appreciation from the lens of royal Black childhood--beautiful!

About the Author

Mylo Freeman grew up in The Hague and lives in Amsterdam. She has been a full-time writer-illustrator since 1993 and has published over 50 picture books. Her debut book Potty! was awarded the Kiek Book Prize and has been translated into many languages.