Parrots, Pugs, and Pixie Dust: A Book About Fashion Designer Judith Leiber

by Deborah Blumenthal, Masha D'yans (Illustrator)

This is a moving and impassioned picture book about the iconic handbag designer Judith Leiber that will embolden young readers to use their imaginations and inspire the world with their own creativity!

At night, she took comfort

making handbags

with any scraps she could find.

Every purse she made

made her dreams come alive.

Growing up in Budapest, Hungary, Judith Leiber drew inspiration from her father, who always brought back special handbags for her mother from wherever he traveled. After getting a job at a handbag house, she dreamt up designs that took her mind off her difficult life. World War II had broken out, and Judith and her family were Hungarian Jews facing persecution. At night, she would make handbags with any scraps she could find.

She found her passion for fashion, and after the war ended Judith immigrated to America. Here, she found her vision for her designs from preening peacocks, fanciful frogs donning gilded crowns, burgers and fries, and layer cake. She turned the ordinary into extraordinary handbags, designing creations unlike anything that had been seen before.

This is an inspiring picture book about finding your passion and being creative from the same team behind Polka Dot Parade: The Story of Bill Cunningham!

Genres: Picture Books, Biography, Nonfiction, Jewish, Fashion, Childrens

40 pages, Hardcover

First published August 27, 2019

About the author

Deborah Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and nutritionist who now divides her time between writing children's books and adult novels. She has been a regular contributor to The New York Times (including four years as the Sunday New York Times Magazine beauty columnist), and a home design columnist for Long Island Newsday. Her health, fitness, beauty, travel, and feature stories have appeared widely in many other newspapers and national magazines including New York’s Daily News, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Woman's Day, Family Circle, Self, and Vogue.

Blumenthal lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Yaritza · Rating 4 out of 5]

Can you possibly imaging gluing 13,000 stones per handbag? You need to have patience and a steady hand. Judith Leiber was iconic with her fabulously, sparkly and unique handbags. They were special evening bags that were shaped as animals, foods, castles, and really anything that came to Judith’s mind. Her love for purses came at an early age and she knew that she would grow up to create handbags that people will love. She had a tough life after War World II broke out. Her and her family had to sew army uniforms and at some point had to hide in order to be safe. This never deterred her and she kept on creating handbags with leftover scraps. She fell in love with an American soldier and in New York she created her business. One mistake with a metal she used on a handbag turned a bad experience to a glittery wonderland. Her happy unique bags was the “it” bag that first ladies and celebrities carried to events to pair with their outfits. These purses are costly, unique and a conversation starter. I love purses just like these beautiful master pieces. Having a bag from Judith lets you be unique and standout. This book had great illustrations that let you see how amazing and different her handbags are. Her story will teach kids that when you have a passion for something, keep doing what you love and think outside the box. Kids will truly enjoy the glittery life of Judith Leiber.

[Celebrilomiel · Rating 3 out of 5]

The syntax occasionally bothered me (the infelicities were primarily in the jacket flap blurb and the author bio rather than in the book itself, luckily), but my main problem with the book is that some of the facts were presented non-sequentially, so the dates appeared to not match up. I paused and flipped back a few pages to double-check a previous statement, and after finishing the book I turned to Wikipedia to fact-check.

The book says that Judith, after working for other handbag companies, started her own company in 1963. The next spread contains an undated anecdote — implied by sequence to have occurred after 1963 — that describes how she began covering handbags with jewels. The next few pages mention famous people who carried her bags. One page states that Mamie Eisenhower carried a bejeweled bag to her husband's inaugural balls in 1953 — ten years before Judith started her own company, and consequently also prior to when the book implied that Judith had had the idea to cover bags in rhinestones. My first thought was that one of the dates had been misprinted, but then I began wondering if Mamie carried a bag designed by someone else or if the book had missed saying that the first jeweled handbag Judith designed had been created while she was working for another company. Because of the sequence of the pages, it appeared that Judith only started designing bejeweled handbags after she started her own company — a misleading presentation. The stated dates are correct, Judith did design the bag that Mamie carried, and she designed it while working for another fashion company.

Although the book was not wrong, the narrative was not specific enough to avoid the confusion, and the resulting ambiguity and the doubt that it cast on the veracity of the rest of the book made the reading experience less positive than it could have been. A more careful author or more punctilious editor could have caught the apparent discrepancy and added the merest sliver of information to solve the problem.

(But hey, this is a picture book about sparkly handbags. I'm probably the only person paying this much attention to dates and details.)

[Joan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A charming picture book for older children (and adults) about the life and work of Judith Leiber, who was truly the mistress of the handbag, or as she was also known, the Queen of Minaudières. Her exquisitely detailed crystal-covered evening bags came in every conceivable shape from animals to food to icons, and were carried by First Ladies, movie stars, opera divas and many others.

While Leiber lived a long life, she had known the poverty and tragedies that came with being Jewish in World War II Hungary. At the end of the war, however, she met a young American serviceman and the two married. She joined him on his return to the United States and they lived a long life together, dying at home just hours apart, after a marriage that lasted 72 years.

Examples of Leiber's handbags can be found today in museum collections around the world – or you can buy one, if you can afford it. Meanwhile, you can enjoy this delightful book and inspire a child with Leiber's story.

[Aolund · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this picture book biography of Judith Leiber, a designer I hadn’t previously known about. The book catches the reader’s attention right away and then tells Leiber’s story, from surviving the persecution of Jews in 1940s Budapest to designing high fashion handbags to First Ladies in the USA. The beautiful illustrations really capture Leiber’s glittering artwork.

Themes: heroines, fashion/design/art, Jewish history/heritage

Age range: 6-10

[Rosemary · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW! What a life Judtih Leiber had! This book is not only gorgeous it's inspiring too. Google Judith's jeweled handbags to gain an appreciation for her art.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the illustrations. I wish there were more details about Judith Leiber, and more photographs of the purses.

[Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a colorful book!

[Shoshanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

it was nice learning about this important Jewish woman but TBH I didn't find the storytelling very compelling.

[Hannah Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prior to reading this, I hadn’t heard of Judith Leiber. I most enjoyed learning about her tenacious passion for creating art and quirky handbags. The illustrator, Masha D’yans, does a smashing job bringing Leiber’s personality and art to life. It’s such a beautiful book I cannot bring myself to shelve it. I’m also a sucker for biographies that shine a light on true love and/or long marriages (even if it’s not one of the main topics of the book). It sounds like Judith and Gerson Leiber had the real deal and there’s even a sweet photograph of them together at the end of the book. There are also pictures of her handbags at the end too!

[Pam.warren11 · Rating 4 out of 5]

The messages in Parrots, Pugs, and Pixie Dust are so much larger than Judith Leiber’s stunning handbags. Deborah Blumenthal shares a story of imagination, creativity, and overcoming adversity surrounded by the sparkling artwork of Masha D’Yans. #LitReviewCrew

[Deborah Blumenthal · Rating 5 out of 5]

So proud that PARROTS, PUGS, AND PIXIE DUST won the Sydney Taylor Notable book award for 2020!