When Christo’s parents fearfully destroyed his beloved art books after the Nazis brought their oppressive new laws to Bulgaria, it became a formative event in Christo’s life. Clearly, art was powerful, useful, and sometimes threatening; as a young man in art school years later, Christo wanted his paintings to illuminate the truth of life under Soviet control, while the government demanded that art serve as propaganda. Christo fled Bulgaria for France, where he met Jeanne-Claude, his future partner in life and art, and developed his signature art form and style: wrapping objects. Later, having immigrated to the United States, Christo and Jeanne-Claude set their hearts on a large art installation in Central Park but were repeatedly turned down. In the meantime, they wrapped ever-larger objects: enormous structures here and abroad, including the perimeters of small islands and part of the shoreline along the Australian coast. Eventually, after more than two decades, they were permitted to create their masterpiece, The Gates, a winding series of mounted orange flags in Central Park. Always temporary and designed with environmental preservation in mind, Christo’s “wild, wide-open creations” were, unlike the carefully controlled art of his childhood and adolescence, open to interpretation and accessible to all.  (Ages 5-8)

Covered in Color is a vibrantly illustrated picture book biography about visionary artist Christo, encouraging creativity, perseverance, and appreciating the beauty all around us.

Christo (1935–2020) and Jeanne-Claude (1935–2009) were renowned for their large-scale, ambitious art installations that wrapped landmarks and swaths of land in fabric, including Berlin’s Wrapped Reichstag, Paris’s The Pont Neuf Wrapped, and concluding with New York City’s The Gates in Central Park.

This lively biography from Emmy Award–winning journalist Elisa Boxer and illustrator Susanna Chapman chronicles Christo’s humble childhood in Soviet-controlled Bulgaria—under a regime that suppressed individuality and creativity—to his international fame as a bold (and controversial) innovator in the art world. Christo discovered an early love of art and found a way to make a living out of his passion by wrapping bottles, cans, stacks of magazines, and even an air conditioner. When he met his wife, Jeanne-Claude, they moved to New York City as undocumented immigrants and became equal partners in both life and work—he the artist and she the dealmaker.

Together, Christo and Jeanne-Claude made elaborate, visually stunning installations that transformed public spaces around the world, all free to the public. Christo never explained why he felt compelled to wrap things in fabric—rather, his work celebrated individual interpretation and the simple joy of seeing something familiar in a new way. And though each work was temporary, their awe-inspiring designs, uniting nature with the manmade, stayed with viewers long afterward. Covered in Color inspires readers to appreciate the beauty around us, however fleeting, and to push the boundaries of possibility.