WILMINGTON, DE.-Fun is in store for the entire family with Pirate Tales and Beyond: The Adventures of Rip Squeak & Friends, opening at the Delaware Art Museum, October 22, 2005, and on view through January 29, 2006. The exhibition presents more than sixty original paintings and drawings by children’s book illustrator Leonard Filgate. The colorful artworks, created for the Rip Squeak children’s books written by Susan Yost-Filgate, depict the adventures of an unusual group of friends—a mouse named Rip Squeak and his younger sister, Jesse, an abandoned kitty named Abbey, and Euripides, a thespian frog. The friends use their imaginations, improvisational skills, and each other’s unique qualities to care for each other, overcome challenges, and have fun. The stories emphasize themes of tolerance, diversity, and openness to new experiences.

Pirate Tales and Beyond will enjoy a perfect context at the Delaware Art Museum where Filgate’s lively images will be in the company of the Museum’s wonderful collection of American illustration, including many of Howard Pyle’s pirate paintings on view in the newly expanded Museum. Some of these paintings inspired Leonard Filgate’s illustrations for Rip Squeak’s pirate adventures. An exhibition catalog accompanies the exhibition and includes essays by the Museum’s curator, Joyce K. Schiller, exploring the evolution of the Rip Squeak stories as well as Leonard Filgate’s working style and the creation of the story’s images.