Remy and Lulu
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
Ooh la la! From New York Times bestseller Kevin Hawkes, illustrator of Library Lion and Weslandia, comes the charming story of a dog and her owner who become the toast of Paris.
Lulu and her master, Remy, a passionate but struggling portrait painter, wander the French countryside looking for customers. They don’t need much business —just enough for some figs and cheese to keep their bellies full—but not many people seem to appreciate Remy’s abstract style.
Before long, Lulu secretly lends a paw to Remy’s work and—voilà!—the pair are the most celebrated artists on the salon circuit. If only Remy knew why . . .
With art from both beloved children’s book illustrator Kevin Hawkes and award-winning miniatures artist Hannah Harrison, this funny and heartwarming story about friendship and creativity shows that there are many ways to be good at the same thing . . . and that a true friend is always there for you.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Perhaps as a hat tip to their own collaboration Harrison was once Hawkes's intern Hawkes (Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch) tells a story about two fictional artists who work together. Lovable, nearsighted Remy wears a baggy purple smock and bottle-bottom spectacles, and paints cubist-style portraits. "I paint the essence of a person, not their likeness," he says, just before a disgruntled subject breaks a canvas over his head. Unbeknownst to the myopic Remy, his brilliant hound, Lulu, sneaks exquisite, sardonic portraits of the owners' pets into the corners of Remy's larger portraits; these miniatures are Harrison's (Extraordinary Jane) work. When Remy gets a pair of proper glasses and realizes that Lulu's work has been winning the praise he thought belonged to him, there's a period of chilly alienation before the two reconcile. Hawkes's artwork is characteristically sunny and lighthearted, while Harrison's detailed miniatures, whose animal subjects are posed in elaborate period costumes, sit a bit uneasily atop Hawkes's spreads. While the end result is thoroughly charming, they testify to some unwritten truth about the difficulty of reconciling two visual universes within the same book. Ages 4 9.