Douglas Florian discusses his life in the autobiography "See for Your Self". He was born in Manhattan, and loves the big city. His father was an artist, and gave him an appreciation of art. His mother taught him to read and write, which led to him becoming an author. While in college, Douglas illustrated for The New York Times, but later began to write and illustrate children's books.
A majority of this book goes into detail on how Florian creates his works. He spends a great deal of time describing the types of paper, paints, gesso, and brushes he uses in his works, as well as describing where he works, what inspires him, and the entire process. I appreciate the detail Florian gives in his description of the tools he uses in his work; many of the terms used in the book aren't very well known, even to adults. However, the book gives so much weight to this subject, it seems to turn into a "how to" book, rather than an autobiography, and even comes off as an advertisement for his work (especially when his commercial website was mentioned). It's hard for me to determine how I feel about this book overall; it gives so much useful information for the budding artist, but feels out of place for the genre. You may not get the life story you'd expect from an autobiography, but you get so much useful information on art. ( )

This is an autobiography written by Douglas Florian. He goes through his entire life, and talks about all of the inspiration behind him becoming an artist and writer. ( )

The story See for Your Self is a book on the life of Douglas Florian. This easy read biography goes through the life of an amazing author and illustrator. In this book we get to see where he gets his inspiration from and how he got started. Douglas Florian writes children's poetry and illustrates all of his work. I think this book would be great from middle school children. This story was an inspiration for me because I am an artist and it was great seeing how he became successful through his beautiful poetry and art. ( )

Douglas Florian was born in a happy family. Like his father, he loves the museum, the parks, and the people. When he was ten years old, he attended a national coloring contest, he won third pride. He painted his own style and published book for children as well. His famous book is A Bird can Fly, A Winter Day, and Monster Motel. Children will get to know about Douglas with a particular style. They also learn from him how to create their own style of painting and drawing.

(autobiography, non fiction, young adult) Like the autobiography on Margaret Wise Brown in my library collection, I found the young adult perspective on autobiography refreshing. Right away the reader gets to find out interesting tidbits on the featured author or artist rather than wade through many intensive chapters. These young adult level autobiographies always leave me with the feeling of "I could be a ______ writer, poet, artist, fill in the blank too!" This particular book is very informative on Douglas Florian's poetic process and how he chooses the medium of his artwork to accompany his poems. A good project for school children , much in the style of Douglas Florian, would be for them to research an animal or insect, nature etc. on the internet and write a poem about it. The adult/ teacher could encourage them to choose and complete a media process to accompany it. Of course, the teacher/adult would also encourage them (in Douglas Florian's own words: "see for your self") to disregard conventional rules in their poetry/ art project. ( )