Moonlight and music

by Gayleen Aiken

Welcome to the wonderful world of Gayleen Aiken, a unique artist whose paintings depict scenes, both real and imagined, from her life. In this charming storybook, she recreates the realm of her childhood and peoples it with an extended imaginary family, the fun-loving Raimbilli cousins. Not formally schooled in art, Aiken relies on a variety of inspirations for her work: comic books, music, her hometown of Barre, Vermont, and, most of all, her delightfully singular imagination. Her paintings teem with vivid color and fantastic imagery, and the notes she writes in the corner of each one are the work of a natural storyteller. The book's text draws from those notes and from letters the artist sent to writer Rachel Klein.