Lauren Redniss, Author of Century Girl

November 2nd, 2006 by jeffrey yamaguchi

I recently wrote on my 52projects.com site about witnessing a feat of feats: Author and artist Lauren Redniss signed over 7,000 title pages of her new book Century Girl. So yes, the signing of the pages — that was most certainly a feat of feats. But the book, it truly matches the magnitude of Lauren’s page upon page (upon page) signing effort. Century Girl — a “visual biography” — is a work of art that tells the story of a remarkable woman, Doris Eaton Travis, the last living star of the Ziegfeld Follies. It is visually stunning — the colors and art/photos/clippings and presentation make the cleverly inked biographical words LIVE on the page. And though longevity is one of the book’s hooks (”100 years in the life…”) it is really about LIVING life, really, truly living life. It’s an inspiring book on many levels: Doris Eaton Travis’ story inspires you to want to live life to the fullest, and Redniss’ creative, beautiful presentation inspires you to want to tell stories in amazing ways, whether it’s through words or photos or paintings or music or poems or all of it together. So the book is definitely worth checking out. Higly recommended.

 
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