Louie

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Louie (Reissue) Pub. Date: 3/29/2004 Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
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Louie (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition) (Library Binding - THIS EDITION IS INTENDED FOR USE IN SCHO) Pub. Date: 3/28/2004 Publisher: Turtleback Books: A Division of Sanval

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Louie (Library Binding - REV) Pub. Date: 8/22/1983 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

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Louie Pub. Date: 3/8/2004 Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
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Louie Pub. Date: 1/1/1975 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

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Louie Pub. Date: 1/1/1975 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

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Overview

Susie and Roberto are putting on a puppet show and all of their friends have come to see it, including she Louie. As the show begins, Louie becomes fascinated by the smiling puppet Gussie and shouts "Hello!" in front of a silent audience. After the show, Louie goes home and dreams about Gussie. When he wakes up, he discovers that his friends have left a gift for him. This classic Ezra Jack Keats story of love and generosity is as meaningful today as when it was first published more than twenty years ago.

Susie and Roberto's puppet show is temporarily interrupted when Louis becomes fascinated by one of the puppets.

Editorial Reviews

Children's Literature

This reissue of Keats's 1975 title shows why Keats remains the master of capturing the simplest emotions of childhood in a beautifully recreated inner-city setting. As Susie and Roberto put on a puppet show for the neighborhood kids, Louie, who never speaks, is so fascinated by one of the puppets, a green-faced, red-nosed, clown like puppet in baby clothes, with stubby arms held up to be held, that he disrupts the show by standing up and shouting out to Gussie, "Hello! Hello!" At the end of the show, Louie grabs Gussie for a hug and is persuaded only with difficulty to let go. Finally he heads home, through dark, graffiti-covered streets, to his lonely, bare apartment, where he sits all alone on the uncarpeted floor, dreaming of Gussie and of being mocked by the others for his behavior at the performance. But then he finds that someone—presumably compassionate Susie and Roberto—has left him Gussie as a wonderful present. The spare and simple text allows Keats's luminous and expressive paintings to dominate the telling of the story. Louie's wordless joy as he rushes toward Gussie, with his arms outstretched to the waiting puppet, is heartbreakingly poignant and moving. It is hard not to have a lingering lump in the throat after this one. 2004 (orig. 1975), Puffin, Ages 3 up.
—Claudia Mills

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780142400807
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
Publication date: 3/29/2004
Edition description: Reissue
Pages: 40
Sales rank: 183,700
Age range: 4 - 8 Years
Lexile: AD270L (what's this?)
Product dimensions: 8.00 (w) x 9.06 (h) x 0.14 (d)

Meet the Author

Ezra Jack Keats

Caldecott Medal recipient Ezra Jack Keats (1916-1983) is the beloved author of more than eighty-five books for children, including Goggles and The Snowy Day.

Biography

When Ezra Jack Keats began creating children's books in the 1960s, he noticed something missing from the genre and chose to correct it.

Keats had already illustrated several kids' books and was starting his second when he made a simple but important decision: The main character would be black. "None of the manuscripts I'd been illustrating featured any black kids-except for token blacks in the background," Keats later wrote. "My book would have him there simply because he should have been there all along."

The character, Peter, debuted in The Snowy Day, which won a Caldecott Medal. Perhaps the strongest statement Keats made about race at the time was making ethnicity (his first book's protagonist was a Puerto Rican boy) completely incidental to the story. The books' themes are universal: In the case of Snowy Day, a boy discovers the joy of angel-making, sledding, and all the other things kids do on a free winter day.

The child of immigrants, Keats grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, in relative poverty. Although his gifts with pencil and paint were obvious from a young age, his father, a waiter, discouraged his artistic ambitions, fearing it would be too hard for his son to make a living. When he brought home tubes of paint for Ezra, he would tell the boy that hard-up artist customers had swapped their paint for soup. When his father died, however, Keats discovered a stash of newspaper clippings: his father had carefully saved the notices of all of Ezra's artistic prizes and achievements.

Once established as a creator of children's books, Keats developed a stable of characters -- including the adventurous Peter, a shy boy named Louie, and a sympathetic girl named Amy -- who often resurfaced over the author's twenty-odd years of storymaking. Often taking place in urban settings and illustrated in Keats's hallmark gouache and collage style, the stories chronicle the discoveries, pleasures, and fears of being a kid: coping with a new sibling, befriending a previously scary blind neighbor, entering a pet show, or finding a pair of goggles.

Keats tackled the topic of single parenthood in Louie's Search, where Louie accidentally discovers a husband for his mom. Even when characters behave oddly or badly (as in the case of Louie's new dad, who initially accuses the boy of stealing from his junk truck), their innate goodness is always revealed. Each title exemplifies Keats's faith in people.

With his muted, evocative images and his commitment towards diversity, Keats made children's literature vivid and human in a way it had never been before.

Good To Know

In the late 1930s, Keats worked as a mural painter on WPA projects. He entered the Army in 1943, where he designed camouflage patterns.

Later, Keats created five greeting cards about peace for UNICEF's first greeting card season ... A million cards were sold that year.

The de Grummond Children's Literature Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi is the sole repository for Ezra Jack Keats's archives.

A life-size bronze statue of Peter, Willie, and Peter's chair sits in Imagination Playground in Brooklyn's Prospect Park.

1. Also Known As:
  
  Jacob Ezra Katz (birth name)
1. Date of Birth:
  
  March 11, 1916
2. Place of Birth:
  
  Brooklyn, New York
1. Date of Death:
  
  May 6, 1983
2. Place of Death:
  
  New York, New York

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Louie

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Overview

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Editorial Reviews

Children's Literature

Product Details

Meet the Author

Ezra Jack Keats

Biography

Good To Know

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