Sunday, July 24, 2016

The story of Snowflake and Inkdrop

We have two books in our library where the stories are presented like these in The story of Snowflake and Inkdrop - where in the middle of the book you flip the book over so you can read the other half of the story - allowing the two characters or events to collide.  Kirkus call this 'dos-a-dos'. You will see what I mean from the German cover.



This book  was originally written in Italian so there are a number of people involved in the production. Authors - Alessandro Gatti and Pierdomenico Baccalario, Illustrator Simona Mulazzani and translator Brenda Porster.  Simona Mullazzani has illustrated more than 90 books.  I need to search these out and add some more to our library - her work is very special.



It is a challenge to decide where to start but I think the 'front' might be The story of Snowflake.  He drifts across the winder sky looking for somewhere to land.  As you turn the page you will see an intricate die cut pages with a hint of colour.  Here you need to stop and try to guess what lies beneath - a town, a circus, a playground. Meanwhile at the other end of the story a tiny inkdrop, sitting on a table in an artist's studio, longs for freedom.  The wind blows in and the ink drop is thrown out of the window so now the two hearts can collide.



Here is a detailed review with some examples of pages.  The image below comes from a teaching idea on this blog.

The two stories, bound dos-à-dos, meet in the middle on a climactic (in every sense of the word) double gatefold in which images of stars and rolling ocean, animals and people, 
light and dark whirl together: 



You might also look at this book by Cresent Dragonwagon.


1 comment:

kinderbooks said...

Love this book. Have just added it to our collection and have already given it to a teacher for art inspiration.