Louis, a ‘scrambled-up pup’, lives with elderly trumpeter, Charlie, and they make music together until Charlie is taken away in an ambulance. After homeless Louis finds another musician to make his tail wag again, a miraculous reunion occurs.
The artist keeps the viewer’s gaze on just the main characters. Louis, the focus of the story, is a bag of bones with a tail, and the others are hardly more robust or substantial – Charlie is a lean husk withering away and Pete keeps his face in the shadow of his cap. Set in a city strongly redolent of the Big Apple, two unlikely musicians make a home together. Charlie, the jazz trumpeter, encourages Louis from the Lost Dogs’ Home to ‘sing’ along with him, until they are separated by circumstance.
Suwannakit’s colour choices of bruised russets and browns match perfectly with his decision to float their lives in cameo on the white page. This device is perfect to illustrate the alienation of the artists, and their precarious lives on the fringes of society. Other city dwellers are shown in small groups, doing their own thing – this is a neighbourhood within a teeming metropolis. The motley but kindly collection of performers who share a house with Pete gather around Louis in a way that could be read as malevolent, but is a true circle of security. Louis is a city animal, and the reader never feels that he is completely alone. The bright lights of performance is when they all truly come alive – whether on a stoop, in a nightclub or nursing home. The apple green endpapers with jaunty musical notes assure the reader that there is love within this story.
Picture Books for Older Readers
