Little me riding books

[Francophones, une version préparée pour vous est disponible ici !]

There are tons of children books. Always been tons. A lot moved me, of course, but the one I cherrish the most remain Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, along with its sequel Through the Looking Glass.

This slightly cruel fairytale, funny and out of time, hadn't change a bit since its first publication in 1865. However, what's noticeable about it is the way illustrators felt about the characters and represented them along the years.

John Tenniel took this role first when the original book came out. His drawings are quite realistic, plain, and even the Mad Hatter seems to lack a bit of madness - although beautifully drawn. While nowadays' trend with children books is to create simple-looking, colorful and sweet drawings, Tenniel offered here illustrations close to stone-engraved pieces.

More recently, French artist LostFish illustrated Through the Looking Glass. Her signature, this little sweetness mixed with macabre and human torments, gave birth to a brand new vision of Alice and her late adventures. Unlike in Alice in Wonderland, small Alice becomes a young woman at the end of Through the Looking Glass. LostFish's work emphasizes this with elegance and a slight touch of cruelty. Her Queens remind of some of her past works about dolls.
Hence this book is a pure delight and I do warmly recommand Carroll's fans to purchase it, for themselves, for their kids, for the beauty it carries.

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Leaving Alice's world away, it is clear that traditionnal fairytales (Grimm, Andersen, Perrault...) remain what attract people the most when talking about children stories. Each illustrator has his own way of drawing them, but only a very few played the originality card...

These classics are not what moved me the most within the past few years. When it comes to children books, I have been more interrested in original illustrations books and a few sweet series with cute, unique design carried by a nice tone for the narrative part, far from taking the baby-reader as a dumb one.

It's with pleasure, then, that I've discovered in Finland the lovely canadian series Octonauts (MEOMI). Colors and drawing style always caught me. Stories are simple, well-writen, supported by an aquatic design filled with adorable characters accomplishing different quests. A true pearl to keep at hand...

Just like the young South-French illustrator Papo, an Art (Illustration department) student, whose drawings have always been part of my favorite ones. The way he plays with the colors, the narrative lines... Quite a lot of things made this young man become my current must-see regarding "children" illustrations, more precisely children literature-inspired pieces.

         

      

Drawings and projects from Papo can be found here!

As for Asian children books, it's another fairytale I will talk about later...

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On another note, at the moment I am very busy with audiovisual works. A shop special project is in-the-making together with the pretty Lindsey M., and I do hope more details about it could be displayed soon.