Be Our Guest!
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Welcome to the Parker Palm Springs, where you’ll experience a delightful time away, filled with everything you’d expect from a sunny, California vacation. There’s tennis courts and a lemonade stand, a gorgeous pool, and a lawn for croquet. But, the other guests and staff are more than a little unexpected . . .
From the New York Times bestselling photographer of Beaches, Gray Malin, comes Be Our Guest!, Malin’s first children’s picture book, compiled from his acclaimed series of photographs Gray Malin at the Parker Palm Springs. If Eloise had lived in an animal-only hotel, it would have had the style and whimsy of the Parker. Just reading Be Our Guest! will whisk children away on a temporary holiday, which is nothing less than extraordinary.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Parker Hotel "is very ORDINARY," insists Maurice the concierge. "But we love it here." Ordinary is definitely a relative concept in this instance: the hotel is staffed and visited entirely by animals (the guests include a camel, an ostrich, and a zebra), and Maurice, who takes readers on a tour of the premises, is a capuchin monkey. In his first book for children, Malin, who specializes in lush travel photography, has created a junior version of a coffee table book. The images, all shot on location at the actual Parker Hotel in Palm Springs, are saturated with color, the pool shimmers under the desert sky, and the lighting gives all the animals an old-school Hollywood glamour. The novelty of the concept never entirely overcomes the sense of posed inertness in the images, which may be why Malin's text seems to be trying too hard, with unimaginative wordplay set in all-caps colored type (an elephant is "CHARGING ahead" to a party). There's no denying, however, that Maurice has real star power, especially when he demonstrates the superiority of the Parker's beds by jumping on them balletically and snuggling between the covers. Ages 4-8.
