From School Library Journal
Grade 6 Up-As a photographer, Lange specialized in documentary-type portraits, seeking to capture in people's faces the stories of their lives. Through the years of the Great Depression and the Second World War, she recorded the down-and-out, the oppressed, the needy. Her portrait "Migrant Mother" has become a familiar icon of hardship, a symbol of the dislocation and poverty caused by the dust bowl in the 1930s. Her camera recorded the Japanese Americans sent to internment camps in the 1940s, and in later travels she preserved the images of children around the world. As a young girl the author knew Lange and was, through her photographer father, connected with the intimate circle of Lange's family and friends. She uses personal memories; her subject's own written words in diaries, interviews, and letters; and especially a liberal selection of dramatic photographs to show the talent and the complex personality of this extraordinary woman. It was hard for Lange, in the decades in which she lived, to pursue her career while balancing family responsibilities and personal crises. She was independent, even radical, in her political thinking and social philosophy. Her story resonates with issues of gender, social policies, artistic merit, and human interest. This well-constructed, sympathetic biography deserves many readers and is a must for every library.Shirley Wilton, Ocean County College, Toms River, NJCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Gr. 6^-12. Lange's stirring black-and-white photographs, more than 60 of them, exquisitely reproduced, provide the drama in this biography of the famous camera artist. Here are the famous pictures that brought the nation up close to the man on the bread line during the Depression, a migrant mother unable to feed her children, a sharecropper in the South, a homeless child on the road, a Japanese American family interned during World War II. The beautiful, spacious design of this photo-essay, with thick quality paper, clear type, and brief quotes from Lange at the head of each chapter, invites you to come back and look and look at her work. The pictures show how Lang got close to people and that she caught her subjects in relation to harsh, powerful events and to one another. Partridge draws on letters, journals, and oral history to give a strong sense of Lange's personal struggles as a child, a wife, and a mother; her lasting pain at her father's desertion; her shame over the disability caused by a childhood bout with polio; and her awareness as an adult that that vulnerability helped her in her work. The author also provides an insider's viewpoint: as a child, she knew Lange. Partridge's father became Lange's assistant at the age of 17, and he worked with her for years in the field and in the darkroom. Many of the photos of Lange in the book are by him, including some of Lange with the child Elizabeth. Like Freedman's, Martha Graham , this fine photo-essay will interest adults as much as teens. A Junior Library Guild Selection. Hazel Rochman


Book Description
Dorothea Lange's desperate and beautiful pictures of the migrant workers in California and her heartbreaking photographs of Japanese Americans interned during World War II put human faces on some of the darkest episodes in America's history. Restless Spirit is an intimate portrait of a woman who struggled to balance her passion for her career and her love for her family, all the while producing some of the most celebrated, powerful photographic works in America's history.

"Lange's stirring black-and-white photographs provide the drama in this biography of the famous camera artist . . . . This fine photo-essay invites you to come back and look at her work." (Booklist, starred review)


Card catalog description
A biography of Dorothea Lange, whose photographs of migrant workers, Japanese American internees, and rural poverty helped bring about important social reforms.

ANNOTATION

A biography of Dorothea Lange, whose photographs of migrant workers, Japanese American internees, and rural poverty helped bring about important social reforms.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

A biography of Dorothea Lange, whose photographs of migrant workers, Japanese American internees, and rural poverty helped bring about important social reforms.

FROM THE CRITICS

Mary Lou Burket

It's a handsome book, and one that shows young readers the breadth of Lange's concerns.
— Riverbank Review

Children's Literature - Barbara Sauer 067087888X

As a young girl growing up in Hoboken, New Jersey, Dorothea Lange never seemed to fit in: she was stricken with polio at age seven and limped; she hated school and skipped as often as she could; she despised her father for leaving the family and described her mother as "difficult." Lange began her career as a photographer's assistant, learned quickly, and within a few years opened her own studio in San Francisco. Her marriage to artist Maynard Dixon and the arrival of their two sons presented Lange with a difficult situation: how to respect her commitment to her family and her commitment to her art. At a time when women were supposed to stay home and care for their husbands and children, Dorothea Lange was traveling the back roads capturing a disturbing vision of America. Her photographic perspective—her art—brought the souls of America's destitute out of the dust, off the breadlines, away from internment camps, and onto the pages of the nation's magazines and newspapers. Because Elizabeth Partridge's grandfather worked for Lange for many years, her personal insights, along with quotations from letters and journals, bring Lange to life. Partridge's work is both photo essay and biography. She provides a good balance between photo and text as it presents the personal and artistic life of the artist. Partridge's writing is clear and concise, with many interesting quotes, a bibliographic listing, and an index. In addition to the artistic and biographic merit, the work is a valuable chronicle of some of America's bleakest hours. 2001 (orig. 1998), Puffin Books, and Ages 10 up.

Children's Literature - Kathleen Karr

Lange was a brilliant photographer who did her best work as a chronicler of the ravages of the Great Depression for FDR's Farm Security Administration. Her "Migrant Mother" became an icon of the period. It's fascinating, then, to read of Lange's bohemian life and her own shortcomings as a mother as she faced an earlier version of today's working mother's dilemma. Photography always came first. A sympathetic view of a difficult personality, Partridge's biography takes advantage of the author's family connections and her childhood remembrances of Lange. The narrative is strong on Depression history, and the moving photographs are reproduced with verve.

Children's Literature - Susie Wilde

Studded with Lange's amazing photographs and poignant quotes, the book blends a view of the woman with the troubled times in which she lived. Dorothea had her own early difficulties. Polio, desertion by her father, and maternal weakness were all adversities that translated into her lifelong appreciation for those who struggled. Lange's humanness makes her willingness to improve the human condition even more understandable. Her compassion is evident in the photographs of the Great Depression's homeless, migrant workers, the evacuated Japanese-Americans, and southern sharecroppers. As the book traces her evolution as an artist and person, the author never shies from Lange's difficulties or failings. The author's father was Lange's photographic assistant and close friend.

Children's Literature - Jan Lieberman