Bedtime ritual
In the forest, the ocean, the savannah or in the mountains, night falls and the animals prepare to be lulled by Morpheus. While they are well camouflaged behind a bush, in a cave or even buried in a fluffy pile of leaves, the reader is invited to search the image and open the flaps to find them. A cardboard presented in a square format, Good night skillfully introduces toddlers to reading and literature. The text, thanks to short and evocative sentences, followed by interrogatives, solicits the participation of children who, just like animals, experience this bedtime ritual. Each painting extends over double pages in which moments sketched from life unfold, until this finale where the attentive eye will find each of the animals – which have become soft toys -, placed here and there in the baby’s room. The candor of the line is combined with the great readability of the images adorned with this Pantone orange perceptible in the title, then, here and there, on each animal. A tender and poetic album to put in all little hands.
Marie Fradette
Good night
★★★★
Clémence Pollet, Albin Michel Jeunesse, Paris, 2024, 14 pages. From 1 year old.
The wind will carry me away
“It’s the story of a little seed who wanted to see the world. “Take me with you,” she asked the wind. And the wind blew and blew and carried him over the fields, beyond the desert, across the sea,” without really caring where it took him. If this theme of starting over has been treated many times, Clémence Sabbagh manages to replay it differently by adopting the point of view of the small sprout. The latter is recovered by a little girl and becomes a tree until this cyclical finale in which a man tears off a bad Seed who wilds his orderly garden. The short, lilting and expressive text is overlooked by illustrations by Teresa Arroyo Corcobado, who, inspired by Paul Cox, Roger Duvoisin and other painters with colorful graphics and somewhat vintage lines, offers moving images. A rain falling sideways, the flight of birds, the play of children or even a few sequential images testifying to the passing of time ensure this vitality and embrace this theme of starting over.
Marie Fradette
Bad Seed
★★★★
Text by Clémence Sabbagh, illustrated by Teresa Arroyo Corcobado, Maison Éliza, Nantes, 2024, 40 pages. From 3 years.
Iridescent the abyss
We still know very little about Anna McGregor, Australian author-illustrator. His first two titles have not been translated, despite some awards in Australia, but his most recent album, Who is afraid of light?, will certainly bring her out of the shadows. For the occasion, we descend into the deep seabed, into icy waters and extreme pressure that the sun cannot reach, and which are nevertheless teeming with life. We then dialogue with Fernand, a species initially invisible in the darkness, and whose features are revealed a little more with each of his encounters. Humorous, mysterious and informative – we discover the abyssal anglerfish, the returning fish and the vampire of the abyss, in particular – the story unfolds in a writing that covers two levels of reading, doubling our pleasure. Furthermore, the illustrations are bathed in color contrasts, which add the secret and fantastic aura of a universe that seems straight out of the imagination.
Yannick Marcoux
Who is afraid of light?
★★★★
Anna McGregor, translated by Joanie Boutin, La Courte Escale, Montreal, 2024, 32 pages. From 4 years old.
On the blank page of winter
Children’s literature primers are as old as the seasons, but the most recent proposal from Fabienne Gagnon and Fanny Achache, Winter ABC, brings a breath of fresh air to the genre. It’s expected: the album goes through winter vocabulary, in alphabetical order. But unlike disembodied representations taken out of context, named on purpose to polish the vocabulary of our youngest, this proposal is based on the musicality of the language. Each letter enjoys a staging declined in generous alliterations: “Bittering March morning in the mountains / A thousand muscular grannies / In coats and mittens / Ride on a snowmobile ride”. The meaning of the words, subordinated to their music, often generates crazy situations, which are underlined by the originality of the illustrations. It feels like a slam, to loosen our jaws frozen by the icy wind or these dusty alphabet books, folded into old habits.
Yannick Marcoux
Winter ABC
★★★1/2
Text by Fabienne Gagnon, illustrated by Fanny Achache, Station T jeunesse, Montreal, 2024, 32 pages. From 4 years old.