This is a gorgeous, joyous book by an Alaskan artist. She says of her own work: "I am people-oriented and family-oriented, and I want to paint the best of people. Perhaps that's idealistic, but I don't think it's a bad thing. It's the way I look at life. I want to present my subjects with dignity and humore and fun and happiness. It makes getting up in the morning really easy!"

Barbara Lavallee is probably best known for her illustrations to Barbara M. Joosse's Mama do you love me?. Lavallee's colors are vivid and cheerful, and except for her Maasai woman, the women have lush and plush figures. There are a number of nudes in the collection, for those concerned about that. Lavallee notes that she specializes in painting women, sometimes adding their children, and only seldom does men, except when doing group pictures or her painting of a sumo wrestler. My only caveat about this lovely book is that some of the pictures are a bit small -- the trade-off between the number of pictures and the number of pages, I suppose.

Really a lovely, happy book. I think I'll keep it handy for when I need cheering up.

Lavallee also has a later book: The Best of Barbara. It is worth getting both books. There is not a lot of overlap in reproductions, and by happy coincidence, the duplicates are usually larger in one book than the other, so it's a gain. ( )