Out Now- New Book From Astound Illustrator Sakshi Mangal!

We are celebrating the author debut of Astound illustrator Sakshi Mangal, with the launch of her new picture book The Many Hats of Louie the Rat. 

About the story: “An inventive rat saves the day with perseverance, creativity, kindness, and some helpful hats”

“Inventing is tough! [The illustrations] are amusing, and Louie is adorable.” ― Kirkus Reviews

The novel was published by Owlkids and is available for purchase here.

Astound asked Sakshi to talk more about this lovely retelling and her inspiration for this wonderful story, see below for more details:

What was your inspiration for the characters?

“Louie was created while I was studying my master’s at Cambridge, and was busy creating a collage from the not-so-useful paper lying in my university room. The scrap of paper turned out to be a very unique looking hat and that’s how Louie was born! Louie loves to recycle and reuse and make new things from the things which are not useful for him. The other characters in the story have their own individual personalities and are created with reference to human characters around me.”

What inspired you to write this story?

“The story started with a lot of paper lying in my university room and ended up creating a hat out of scrap. Making that hat inspired me to create more hats and that’s how I created several fancy hats. The story then gradually evolved, and Louie’s personality and character came to be. Louie inspired me to write about making useful things from not-so-useful things. Eventually creating the most useful thing that saves the life of several other rats. I was so inspired by Louie’s character that I wanted to show things in Louie’s house made of not-so-useful things, for all of us to get inspired to create and reuse. Also, we often get carried away with bright and fancy looking things and sometimes ignore the meaning of its usefulness, but Louie inspires us to find usefulness and create usefulness from the things which we no longer require. Thus, the story kept evolving and new ideas came to be through Louie’s own personality.

We are so excited to see more great things from Astound and Sakshi in the future!

The ITSme Society is a collective of top creative agencies that represent award-winning talent worldwide. The ITSme Society agencies represent illustrators and writers across 7 agencies: Advocate Art, Astound US Inc, Illo Agency, Artistique, Yeon, CWLA, and Collaborate.