There are very marked trends in children’s and youth literature from which few books escape. The path of knowledge books is one of the most powerful, with themes that are renewed and updated over the years, some providing innovative content, or at least trying, and others with less luck in their objective. Below we offer you a selection that covers the last few months, and that interestingly touch on very varied topics, although some are widely known in this section.
This story tells the little ones about one of the most wonderful inventions of Humanity: paper. It is born with a cloud and ends up in a factory where paper pulp is created. But it also tells us about its discoverers, both in Egypt and in China, India or Japan. A simple, concise and attractive tour of the world to give an idea of ??the essentials of this great invention in which surely not a few future readers will have left their creativity stamped. Also in Catalan.
Our life is full of numbers. Also shapes. But numbers are one of the first things we learn when we are little. The number of years we are, the number of our house, the apartment, how far my car is, how far the nearest city is, how much fruit I eat a day, how many teeth I have lost… Numbers, numbers and more Numbers is an extensive review of the numeral world that surrounds us, putting it in context in a very simple way and with explanatory illustrations. Each double page is dedicated to an aspect, such as numbers that have monetary value, numbers that we link to time and clocks, or numbers in sports. From this series there is also Shapes, shapes and more shapes, which follows the same pattern but with circles, triangles, squares and rectangles, written on this occasion by Lenka Chytilová and illustrated by Gary Boller. Both books are also in Catalan.
After Lost in the Museum, creator Luisa Vera offers us another exciting journey through universal architecture in Let’s get to work! (in its Catalan version it has been translated by an original Un, dos, tres, pica paret!). With double pages that unfold to see each architectural period in all its splendor, the author goes back to prehistory to tell us about the first constructions, menhirs and dolmens, to advance through Egyptian architecture, Chinese pagodas or Roman circuses. . The illustrations about the Alhambra in Granada share space with the Romanesque cathedral of Santiago de Compostela or the Gothic cathedral of Saint-Chapelle, to continue with the baroque, iron architecture, modernists or the Bauhaus architects. An amalgamation of buildings and constructions where the little ones will also find small visual games to make the tour more entertaining.
A very original way of explaining who wolves are, based on the bad reputation they have acquired in stories such as Little Red Riding Hood or The Three Little Pigs. With pages that unfold to gain content and attractiveness, the authors reveal aspects of the wolves, such as their modus vivendi. But wolves are not the only ones with a bad reputation that circulate in this story. Sharks, spiders and crocodiles also appear, animals with which the protagonists try to put together a scary story but which in the end never ends up being to anyone’s taste. Because when you dig a little into these animals, you realize that the lion is not as fierce as they paint it.
The common thread of this book is Teresa, a young activist from Barcelona who is determined to do more for her city and her planet in the face of the climate emergency. But to do this she has decided to first take a trip, and study some initiatives that are already being carried out and that work in the world. Thus, she will visit Vitoria, where the installation of smart package mailboxes has contributed to reducing road traffic in favor of bicycles; also Milan, one of the most polluted cities in Europe and where, through the ForestaMi program, almost 300,000 trees have been planted so far.
Teresa’s trip also passes through the Vauban neighborhood, in Friburgh (Germany), which went from being a marginal area to a world-renowned eco-neighborhood, or Eindhoven, in the Netherlands, where a 19-story skyscraper, the Trudo Vertical Forest, has become a forest. London, New York, San Francisco, Japan, Shanghai, Melbourne, Medellín and, of course, Barcelona, ??are other cities and countries visited in this interesting project book, very visually attractive and concise in explanations. . A book made in collaboration with the Barcelona city council full of positivism and exemplary realities. Only in Catalan.
We met the Polish creator with the impressive Animal Constructions and now we return to her with Inseparables, a book of knowledge presented by Homer, a cat self-banished from his home in search of a true friend. A search that will take him to look throughout the animal and plant kingdom where he finds truly interesting couples. Caregiving friends include ants and aphids, or clownfish and anemones; Among the inseparable ones, there are cows and bacteria, orchids and fungi or termites and protozoa. Altruistic friends like the cattle egret and the elephant or the remora and the shark. Then there are ideal friends, those from work, false friends (don’t skip them), friends in love or even friends from the neighborhood. An incredible polished parade of friendship with fair and precise explanations, which concludes with a self-test to discover what kind of friends we have made. I’m sure I’m a shrimp, and you? Also in Catalan.
For some time now, the Vegueta publishing house has been publishing a collection of illustrious figures from science, culture and history for the little ones, whom it approaches not only through their biographies and works, but also through educational activities that They can include visiting a museum, searching for some type of information on the Internet or carrying out our own experimental workshop. For the occasion we have chosen the book dedicated to Joan Miró, since these days it has been in the news for the transfer of the great mural that he created for the El Prat airport. Written as if Miró explained his main thoughts to us in a simple way, the book covers the essence of the painter: the constellations, the big feet, the Mont-roig farmhouse, nature, the illness… At the end of the book, if we have Following the instructions, we will not only know a lot about the life of this beloved master of the abstract, but we will also have created our own constellation or at least, our self-portrait.
This book by the American creator Molly Bang that Ekaré reissues departs from what we are used to reviewing in these Tales that Tell. But precisely the originality of her proposal, still valid today despite having been written for more than 30 years, is what has led us to bring it to these pages. Imagine it is a game and at the same time a lesson or guide on how illustrations work, or rather, how to create images to provoke an emotional response in the reader. And she does it through a world-famous story: Little Red Riding Hood. He only uses four colors and a few shapes, all of them essential like the triangle or the rectangle, and the way he advances the speech and adds tension to the images with barely any movement or just changing the color is, to say the least, fascinating. We also think it is an interesting exercise to share with children, because even if they do not fully understand how the composition works, the emotional response to Molly Bang’s game can be very interesting.
A specialist in linocuts and a great lover of natural drawing and details, the French creator Joëlle Jolivert has on this occasion put her creativity at the service of The Human Body, a large-format book that, through the display of flaps (some even exceed the measurements of the book itself once unfolded) that allows us to know in detail the ins and outs of what we hide under the skin: muscles, nerves, circulatory system, bones… Everything is meticulously drawn to the delight of the curious eyes of the young reader . Also in Catalan.
The flaps and also the laser die cuts are very important in this other large format that comes to us from the hand of another French creator, Hélène Druvert, whom we know well in this section, since we have reviewed some of her magnificent books such as Ocean, Anatomy o Nine months, the latter about pregnancy. On this occasion she delights us with a plant walk through aquatic plants to discover phytoplankton; It gives us a flight at ground level between mosses and ferns or makes us participate directly in the photosynthesis of a plant. It also allows us to decompose with the leaves, while making elixirs and poisons with some plants that we did not even know existed. And finally, she fills our pantry with a rainbow of vegetables, while she tells us about the art of deception of some carnivorous plants. All this to emphasize that plants are the first victims of pollution and that entire delicate balance that we have just gone through is in danger. Also in Catalan.
In 2003, one of the most mysterious tunnels in all of America was discovered by chance. The place was already impressive: the city of Teotihuacán, a complex of pyramids and buildings located in central Mexico. Archaeologist Sergio Gómez Chávez accidentally stumbled upon the entrance door of a hitherto unknown tunnel that, once excavated, was revealed to be a place of worship where the new rulers of the city celebrated initiation rituals. The tunnel ran through the city’s subsoil for 103 meters, to the depths of the Quetzalcóatl pyramid and countless archaeological treasures were found inside. This is just one of the spectacular excavations that the Mallorcan illustrator Kiko Sánchez discovers for young readers in Tunnels, incredible constructions from here and there, a large-format book with which he descends into unknown, mysterious and exciting subsoils halfway around the world. For example, to the tunnels of Dover Castle that during World War II served to protect soldiers and the government; or the tunnels under the Berlin Wall through which many Berliners escaped. He also gives us an idea of ??what the so-called narcotunnels of Tijuana are like, used by the cartels to smuggle drugs or also for the trafficking of immigrants and of which more than a dozen have been located.
One of the most curious tunnels is the Drammen Spiral, in Norway, a 1,650 meter long tunnel that spirals up the inside of a mountain as a road to avoid a greater impact on the landscape. The author also dares to imagine what the houses excavated on Mars will be like following the proposal made by the AI ??Space Factory. This artificial intelligence proposes to take advantage of the large lava tunnels on the red planet, which are between 100 and 1,000 times larger than those on Earth, to build our ‘little houses’. A curious and interesting book to have on hand. Also in Catalan.
