The pandemic has forced us to retreat. To explore the tropics of our walls and the exoticism of our flowerbeds. It cracked everywhere, but it also allowed us to find solidarity impulses that carelessness had made us forget. Here are six albums to remind us that sometimes everything you’re looking for can be found in books.
An island like no other
“Which direction should I take? Is the horizon still far away? These are two questions that govern the protagonist of island of happiness, by Marit Tornqvist. In this existentialist fable, a young girl sails the open sea, alone on her boat. She will discover several islands which will decline as many ways of inhabiting the world and, incidentally, of finding happiness.
In this journey of few words, the illustrations combine watercolor, gouache, acrylic, ink, and catch us. They are so magnificent that it would have been inviting to opt for the large album. However, we salute this small format, which offers itself to us like a travel diary, creating an instant intimacy with the protagonist and her quest. Sublime and captivating.
what we have left
The story of Isabelle, narrator ofMadame J. and the ocean liners, is not trivial. Youngest of her three sisters, we find her one morning when spring is emerging through the curtains of her window. Their mother, who left six months earlier, is still absent. Time passes and she doesn’t come back: “It’s a long wait. We don’t know when it will end. Their father takes care of everything, multiplies the pasta meals, with a few variations. Fortunately, there is also the neighbor, Madame J., who always reserves a warm welcome for the girls, offers them her homemade jam and a bit of her wisdom.
Madeleine Allard’s story is bathed in a tenderness that finds a warm and lively echo in the illustrations of Émilie Leduc. In the gaping void of the mother’s absence, Isabelle’s life becomes livable, as long as she has plenty of arms to hold. And then, basically, “waiting is something that happens all by itself”.
One bite at a time
In A slight taste of mango, Davide Cali invites us to an imaginary town where “something big, enormous, gigantic fell from the sky”. The village comes together and concludes that this is, without a doubt, a big problem. The Grand Chief of the Armies, the Inventor and the Philosopher are running out of solutions. Fortunately, a curious little girl approaches the situation differently and turns this problem into a real treat. Snub to the adult world, this teasing album leads to a nice moral. We salute the illustrations by Marco Soma, a colorful spectacle that magnifies this phantasmagorical universe.