Join one little girl named Josette as she searches 1920s Paris to find the best artist to paint a portrait of her stuffed-animal rabbit, Pepette.
After seeing all the fine portraits of her family in her house in Paris, Josette decides that her stuffed-animal rabbit Pepette needs a portrait of her own. The two of them set off for Montmartre, the art center of 1920s Paris, to seek out an artist to paint Pepette's portrait. They encounter Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Marc Chagall, and Henri Matisse, who all try their hand at capturing the rabbit.
Picasso gives Pepette two noses and three ears-which doesn't sit well with Josette. Dalí gives Pepette very droopy eyes-so Josette says "no thank you" and moves on. Chagall paints Pepette flying through the clouds. Josette points out that Pepette doesn't fly and is afraid of heights-so they decide to keep going through the square. When they meet Matisse, he paints Pepette pink, with lots of colorful dots and splashes covering the canvas. It's a beautiful piece of art, but it's not Pepette.
Giving up, Josette and Pepette make their way home. Josette is upset that no one was able to no one was able to capture the true essence of Pepette. Who could capture her soft gray ears, her heart-shaped nose, and all her wonderfulness? And then it comes to her-she, Josette, is the perfect person to do this.
Industry Reviews
Josette Bobette and her rabbit, Pepette, lived at #9 Rue Laffette, Paris." So begins Painting Pepette, the irresistible story of a girl who is so attached to her stuffed rabbit she's convinced her portrait deserves a spot in the family gallery along with "grand-mere and grand-pere." She takes Pepette to Montmartre, to the famous Parisian square "where the best artists in Paris painted." A man who is Picasso (identified inside the front cover and in the author's note but not in the story itself) spots her beloved rabbit and exclaims, "THOSE EARS!" Amusingly, he proceeds to paint Pepette with two noses and three ears. The three-eared portrait is hilarious... and not to Josette's taste at all... "And Pepette had to agree." A man with a bicycle-handlebar moustache stops to gaze at Pepette: "Please, I must paint the very essence of her rabbitness!" This is Dali. His portrait of the rabbit shows her draped bonelessly over a block, and is too "droopy" for Josette... "And Pepette had to agree." Chagall paints a flying-cloud rabbit (but Pepette is scared of heights!) and Matisse makes her too... pink. In the end, Josette knows just what she needs to do to capture her rabbit's "wonderfulness," her soft gray, listening ears and heart-shaped nose. She has to paint the portrait herself: "And Pepette had to agree."
Claire Fletcher's comical, endearing pen-and-ink and watercolor illustrations have a shimmering-melting quality that enchantingly enhances Linda Ravin Lodding's deliciously told story, a brilliantly accessible take on the nature of artistic interpretation. As Matisse tells Josette, "But through art we can see the world any way we want." Not to be missed.--Shelf Awareness in a STARRED REVIEW Josette Bobette, of #9 Rue Laffette, and her beloved pet rabbit, Pepette, have a big problem: of all the family portraits in the Bobette great room--from stoic grand-mere and grand-pere to froufrou family schnoodle, Frizette--Pepette's is nowhere in sight. Determined to find an artist who can perfectly capture Pepette's brilliance, Josette and her bunny take to the bustling Montmartre of 1920s Paris. There they stumble upon four unnamed but prominent artists--can you guess who? The first, intrigued by Pepette's "majestic ears," reimagines the rabbit with three of them, all sharply geometric, as well as two noses and whiskers as wide as the canvas. The second, a distinctly mustachioed man, pleads to paint "the very essence of her rabbitness," and in his final product, Pepette's elongated body droops from a square surface. A third painter, astonished by the bunny's nose--"like a faint star"--portrays Pepette soaring through clouds. Finally, a fourth, bespectacled painter envisions a rosy Pepette against a color-splashed backdrop. It isn't until Josette gently chides the artist's vision ("Pepette isn't pink.") that she learns a most important lesson. Fletcher's illustrations are subtle, sweet, and sprawling, and each artist's exuberant declarations are ideal for reading aloud. Just as Pepette's portrait belongs in the Bobette's great room, this belongs on any bookshelf. Brief back matter explains the famous-artist cameos.--Booklist in a STARRED REVIEW
