posted on 23 Sep 2016

What Is A Child?  by Beatrice Alemagna

Last year we featured Alemagna’s wonderful A Lion In Paris on our site and so we just had to showcase this one too. Again this has been published by the Tate art gallery and this, I think, emphasises just what a fine line there really is between children’s book illustration and more formally recognised fine art.

The idea and the text of the book are very simple. Ask the question ‘What is a child?’ and then illustrate some of the most common characteristics. So we get to see that children come in all shapes and sizes, get frustrated, find adults and their rules puzzling and don’t like getting shampoo in their eyes. None of which will come as a surprise – but in reality the text is just a pretext or gateway to the drawings.

Ultimately, the simplicity of the message is there for us on the back cover of the book:

"A child has small hands, small feet and small ears, but that doesn't mean they have small ideas."

As with the earlier Lion In Paris, the illustrations really don’t just demand your attention they jump up off the page at you. They are presented full page in large format and the use of colour is quite exceptional. There are all sorts of influences at work here in terms of artists and art styles – there’s an echo of simple Japanese drawings and more than a hint of collage, for example – but I suspect the single biggest influence must have been children’s own drawings which these resemble and yet transcend.

A magnificent book – bold and a constant pleasure to look at. Copies are readily available both new and second hand and you can have all this pleasure for a measly five or six pounds.

 

Terry Potter

September 2016