Dutch Treat:

This book by Rien Poortvliet is a wonderful read. As usual he delights with his gift of drawing and painting. He is equally gifted in his ability to tell a story. I highly reccomend this book to any who have fallen in love with the modern day artist Rien poortvliet.

Rien Poorvliet was a Dutch artist and writer of incomparable talent. He was rightly considered a national treasure in the Netherlands, and his death was a national tragedy. Most of his books are free-ranging collections of his superior drawings and paintings interspersed with cursive text narrative about the subject at hand. This book happens to be an account of his life, family, pets, love of animals, culture and country as he experienced it - past, and (at the time) present in the Netherlands. His artwork is extremely expressive and entertaining - he was a master draftsman, and the work ranges from very spontaneous pencil, charcoal, and conte drawings, along with watercolor, and well-finished oil paintings which provide a wonderful visual story of the man's life. The textual narrative is extremely interesting and engaging - you truly feel like you're in the Netherlands, and you're experiencing what he's illustrating and describing. These are more illustrated "picture" books than textual books, but the finely-woven combination of words and pictures completely immerses the reader in Poortvliet's life. He had a wonderful outlook on life, and a fine sense of humor, despite having lived through some very hard experiences. Whether writing and illustrating historical types of subjects (such as this book), or dogs, or horses , or gnomes, or Noah's ark, Poorvliet never failed to completely enthrall the reader. These are books that make you smile from the moment you open the cover, and you hope will never end.