I just spent a week in New Orleans, a place I've wanted to visit since first reading Interview with the Vampire as a teen. The week held plenty of sights and experiences I'd been highly anticipating (a ghost tour, the Garden District, blues and jazz clubs, and — of course — beignets) and some I hadn't expected (Mardi Gras beads hanging in many trees; the informative but emotionally intense National WWII Museum, which Cindy also visited last year; lots and lots and lots of rain).

One pleasant surprise during my trip to NOLA was an encounter with Pete the Cat, star of the series of picture books and early readers written by Eric Litwin and illustrated by James Dean. During a leisurely stroll in the French Quarter, I spotted Pete's familiar face in the window of Gallery Rinard. My parents are huge Pete fans (and I'm an unrepentant cat lady), so I dragged my boyfriend into the gallery to take a look at Dean's original art.

While the gallery offered lots of original canvases, prints, and even puppets of the cartoony Pete his picture-book readers will know and love, many of Dean's paintings are geared towards adults in content and humor (such as this "Most Interesting Man in the World" Dos Equis commercial parody). A series of re-creations of well-known photos and paintings — including The Mona Lisa, Klimt's The Kiss, and Munch's The Scream — features cameos by Pete.

And much of Dean's work portrays his feline friend in a softer, more realistic manner, revealing the artist's deep affection for the real-life Pete. After quite a bit of deliberation, I eventually chose one of these as a souvenir for my parents:



Like Cindy encountering a Dahl book at the WWII Museum, I didn't expect for my kidlit life to come out to play while I was on vacation — but I'm glad it did!