Once again Kate Pankhurst has written a wonderful book for children, this time about female artists and their stories. A wonderful introduction for young readers to the world of art and the history of some famous female artists.
Written in a very engaging style with wonderful illustrations, my daughter loved it.
I recommend this for anyone to read and share with their children.

Thanks to Bloomsbury and Netgalley for the ARC of this book.

We adore Kate Pankhurst’s books and this is another trooper. The engaging style returns with extended stories about each of the inspiring women chosen, this time, from the creative world.

Having dipped into this preview copy, we now have the printed edition very firmly on our wishlist and can’t wait to see it in full colour glory!

I have loved all the Kate Pankhurst Fantastically…. books and this one is no exception. Truly sensational . The children in my class will love using this as a reference point to find out lots of new information! Amazing. Would definitely recommend.

What's the book about?

Kate Pankhurst, an Emmeline Pankhurst descendant, tells the incredible stories of some of history's extremely talented female artists.


My thoughts:
I absolutely loved this book! I will be gifting this to my nieces, nephew and my daughter when she's older. Everything about this is beautiful. I loved the illustrations as well as the concise and inspiring history that covers the challenges and achievements.

What a brilliant book. That focuses on women artist, I found the book inspiring. I could wait to move on to the next artist, I loved each page and I can’t wait to buy a hardback copy when it’s published.

Brilliant brilliant brilliant!

I work as an art educator and still today find it frustrating that every visit to a gallery offers us a very limited choice of women artists to engage with.
Even kids most of the time assume an artist is a man. I’m trying to use more female artists in my work and not necessarily have to try really hard to do it, I want it to be second nature.
I hope that books like this beautiful one can mean we see women artists as part of the mainstream and just as famous, if not more so, than their male counterparts.

This book is intelligently written with the perfect register to engage a young reader and works brilliantly as reference material or equally as reading for pleasure.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for letting me read an advance copy of this book in exchange for my feedback.

Another wonderfully researched, illustrated and written book by Kate Pankhurst. This is a must for every school bookshelf. The artists are described with energy, enthusiasm and honesty which is refreshing to see. Young readers will be able to dip into this wonderful book and I am sure will be fired up to go and do their own research as well as fired up to want to want to explore their own creativity. . Kate Pankhurst has a unique, dynamic way of getting across the story of people's lives for her readers which is fun, accessible and thoroughly engaging. I absolutely loved this book; I learnt things I didn't know and felt empowered after reading it. Books like this should be celebrated and put into the hands of as many children as possible.

With enormous thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley.

This is an excellent book for young audiences and I certainly learned a lot about some of the artists. Reading it also resulted in me wanting to do further research, which is always the sign of a good book. It covers seven important female artists and one very well-known art admirer and collector.

With the exception of Emily Kame Kngwarreye and Faith Ringgold, it's very apparent that in order to be a successful female artist, a woman needed to have a lot of money and support from her family to pursue the career. I'm not sure things are really that different today in that it helps if artists have a significant nest egg to fall back on. I really liked that Pankhurst didn't shy away from these details. There is a lot about the art (of course!) but also about the painter's life and the impact that their culture had on their art and that their art had on their culture.

The only reason I didn't give 5* here is because I felt there were excessive exclamation marks which gave me the impression the author was trying to simplify a complex concept my making it more fun through punctuation. I was also really surprised that Artemisia Gentileschi was missing from this book, given her great significance in the art world and I felt this was an oversight. I realise that the attacks made on her and her resulting "violent" art might be difficult to cover in a book like this, but her direct eye contact, colour palette, use of shading, and the fact that 94% of her work features a female protagonist whose power is equal to or greater than the males depicted in her paintings, would have made her an asset to this book.

Overall, an excellent book for a young person's first foray into the art world.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Kate Pankhurst and Bloomsbury publishing for a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review.