"The Great Word Factory”
“There is a country where the people hardly speak; it’s the country of the Great Word Factory.”
So begins the wonderful text by Agnès de Lestade, which I had the opportunity to envision
and illustrate for Alice Jeunesse (Belgium) and that will be presented this week at the Bologna
Children's Book Fair.
In this country, controlled by the Great Factory, among the rich, who can buy as many words
as they want and the poor, who look for them in the garbage, lives Phileas. Phileas wants to
tell Cybelle how much he loves her, but he only has three little words: Cherry, Dust and Chair.
When I finished reading Agnès’ manuscript, the lines of Borges came to mind: “In the letters of
rose exists the rose / and the whole Nile in the word Nile.” If the essence of things exists within
their names, then one who is in love, like Phileas, can transform these three little words into treasures:
where dust becomes love, a chair becomes a throne and a simple cherry becomes the most precious
gift he can give to Cybelle.
Thus came about the first illustration of the book, which you can see in the blog header.
It has been a wonderful challenge attempting to make the silent images say everything that the words
can’t. I hope that you enjoy this album as much as I enjoyed creating it!
I am leaving you with a few more illustrations:
_Read reviews about this book (in French)
>
La soupe de l'espace
> Chez Gaëlle la libraire
> Sous le feuillage
_Buy online
> fnac.fr
> amazon.fr