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Amy Luwis is the gal behind "Yoga to the Rescue", an engagingly illustrated yoga deck that tackles the common woes of real girls in 7 relevant categories. We sat down with Amy to get the story behind her business, her life, and her inspirations. Visit her at www.rescuegirl.com.

A toad sitting on your toes, a bull balancing a china cup on your thigh, a turtle rating your caboose a “10”…welcome to the quirky and amusing world of illustrator/author Amy Luwis, where you will be hard pressed to find an illustration without an animal or creature lending its support to the task at hand. Take a peak inside her debut publication, an unusual and irreverent little yoga deck, Yoga to the Rescue: Remedies for Real Girls and you’ll get the gist—real girls, and I mean real girls, with imperfect noses and tummy roles bend and stretch into yoga poses with the assistance of a curious cat, a helpful rabbit, and a literate snail.

Born and happily raised just beyond the fringe of Washington DC, in McLean VA, by her father, an architect with an insatiable appetite for scouting land and building his steel and glass structures and an adoring mother-- gifted in balancing the books while creating sumptuous dinners and collecting awards for her etchings and pottery...all with apparent

ease. Amy's exuberant imagination beckoned at an early age--when most girls are discovering dolls, Amy was discovering that tin foil crafts nicely into a marvelous little village, washers and bolts make wonderful mobiles, and stories about Pippidyswicks in bathtubs must to be told. Many of her creations would become treasured gifts among friends and family or sometimes they simply ended up in the dust bin. Either way, the creative road was the only one worth taking and after a short brush with architecture at Catholic University; an inspiring gig at a post-Andy Warhol NYC design firm and a behind-the-scenes job at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Amy unearthed her true calling and focused her talents on establishing the most unique publishing company.

Playground Press skipped onto the publishing scene equipped with sand buckets and some pretty marvelous material—not bad for a company that was started just last year by Amy and her engaging business partner, revenue maven, Nora Khalili. They launched their company with the Yoga to the Rescue line which grabbed the attention and praise of The Washington Post and rocker Liz Phair. Their lofty and unwavering motto “Publishers of remarkable books and gifts of substance with uncommon humor and high standards” will continue to prove itself in their next publication, The Unfortunate Umbles, another creation by Ms. Luwis which will be published June 2006. The Umbles is a disconcerting, rhythmic alphabet book peopled with wide-eyed ingénues, revealing the fears and failings that we all identify with at times, from not being noticed to friends never calling.

When Amy isn’t conjuring up odd little stories or pictures she is overseeing the successful nonprofit which she co-founded in 1995, 1-800-Save-a-Pet.com—North America’s largest pet adoption web service which has attracted Alicia Silverstone onto its billboards and Drew Barrymore into its television public service announcements. Amy lives and works in Arlington, Virginia in an historic neighborhood that seems to have more dogs and cats than humans. She and her boyfriend, musician Bryan Aspey, proudly contribute to this ratio one lovely rescue dog from Mexico and Bryan’s beloved cat Dorian.