American artist Joan Mitchell (1925-92), who created abstract oil paintings, drawings, and prints, is the subject of a new children’s picture book by Boston College graduate Lisa Rogers. Joan Mitchell Paints a Symphony (Calkins Creek, 2025) focuses on the artist’s “La Grande Vallée,” a suite of 21 large-scale paintings she created in a studio outside Paris. Inspired by her friend’s description of an idyllic hidden valley in France, Mitchell paints the valley, not as a collection of flowers and meadows, but a harmonious, color-drenched blend of drips, splashes, and brush strokes. Joan Mitchell Paints a Symphony is illustrated by Stacy Innerst. Kirkus Reviews called the book “simply marvelous.” Rogers is an award-winning author whose other publications include Beautiful Noise: The Music of John Cage and 16 Words: William Carlos Williams and “The Red Wheelbarrow.”