Parker Looks Up: An Extraordinary Moment

Description

A visit to Washington DC’s National Portrait Gallery forever alters Parker Curry’s young life when she views First Lady Michelle Obama’s portrait. When Parker Curry came face-to-face with Amy Sherald’s transcendent portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama at the National Portrait Gallery she didn’t just see the First Lady of the United States. She saw a queen–one with dynamic self-assurance regality beauty and truth who captured this young girl’s imagination. When a nearby museum-goer snapped a photo of a mesmerized Parker it became an internet sensation. Inspired by this visit Parker and her mother Jessica Curry tell the story of a young girl and her family whose trip to a museum becomes an extraordinary moment in a moving picture book.

Parker Looks Up follows Parker along with her baby sister and her mother and her best friend Gia and Gia’s mother as they walk the halls of a museum seeing paintings of everyone and everything from George Washington Carver to Frida Kahlo exotic flowers to graceful ballerinas. Then Parker walks by Sherald’s portrait of Michelle Obama…and almost passes it. But she stops…and looks up!

Parker saw the possibility and promise the hopes and dreams of herself in this powerful painting of Michelle Obama. An everyday moment became an extraordinary one…that continues to resonate its power inspiration and indelible impact. Because as Jessica Curry said “anything is possible regardless of race class or gender.” – publisher
Hardcover
40 pages
Ages 4-8