A detail from the illustration for pages 4-5. The model for Lucas’s dog Skip was Pica who belonged to Susan’s partner, artist and graphic designer Richard Rudnicki. Susan: “Pica was a wonderful dog. Never any trouble, and what she loved most of all was to run on the beach near her home in Lawrencetown. Unfortunately, she became ill and died within months of me photographing her.” Pica appears in seven of the book’s sixteen illustrations.
Susan Tooke © 2006