Imaginary Friends, in Print

I'm really really glad to get my hands on this book before flying out. Dearest Melanie Lee gave me a complimentary copy, and I'm very pleased to have procured a few more copies at the bookstores because these make great gifts for the friends who don't live in Singapore. There're plenty of musings happening on its Facebook page.

There's the e-copy from Kobo, which I eagerly read in October. But I randomly lost that because I forgot to back it up when I swopped out iPads. No sweat. I always prefer hard copies. Happy to have this to do a second read. While I miss Sheryl Khor's easy illustrations, it's quite cool to see a different take on the book by pop artist Arif Rafhan. He doesn't know Melanie prior to the collaboration on the book, and would really have to use his imagination to understand the background of each fable and draw out the satire.

Merrily flipped through and this time, I read less of the words and lingered over the illustrations. Could quite easily identify the distinctive traits of each personified character as imagined by Arif. He's got a few preferences for the eyes, mouths and edges of the drawn silhouettes that make it uniquely his creations. The sketches preluding each fable are done in outlines. Was almost tempted to color them. The colors on the cover look so cheerful! For Zelda, the Zealous Zither, the artist illustrated her as a cute acoustic Alpine zither with a fretted fingerboard instead of the rather flat concert zither. Just ignore the number of strings drawn okay. Heee. Hey, I notice these things! :P

Quite taken with the artist's impression of Lucy The Lively Leek.

Lucy is a chatty one and couldn't help being sociable. But the other vegetables in the drawer didn't seem to appreciate conversations. So she had to remain quiet till the "playful potatoes" came along and kept up a banter and were totally happy to chat with Lucy.

The moral of this story goes,

Finding the right company to hang out with makes all the difference.

Very true.