This highly ambiguous picturebook presents a sophisticated and atmospheric narrative about relocation and identity within time and space. A girl views a new home with her parents. While the parents are led by the estate agent, the girl wanders on her … [Read more...]
Waterloo & Trafalgar
War and violence are integral to the history of Europe as well as its present, but the explicit representation of these themes can be challenging in a classroom context. This picturebook by French artist Olivier Tallec gently raises these themes in a … [Read more...]
We had to Leave [Meidän piti lähteä]
This is another example of a wordless picturebook that deals with the topic of the migrant crisis. We Had to Leave is gentler and happier than the other examples in the corpus: Migrating [Migrando], Horizons [Orizzonti], and The Mediterranean … [Read more...]
What a Masterpiece! [Che Capolavoro!]
This picturebook takes canonical examples of classic and modern art to explore the universality of artwork in everyday life. The main character is surrounded by signifiers of art and culture - from Banksy to Salvador Dali, from Einstein to the Eiffel … [Read more...]
What the Scissors Did? [Ką padarė žirklės?]
The majority of wordless picturebooks produced in Europe are produced in Northern and Western European countries. However, the oldest example of the form used in this corpus is a Lithuanian wordless picturebook originally published in 1961. It has … [Read more...]
Why? [Zachem?]
This famous Russian wordless picturebook is one of the oldest picturebooks in the selection, as it was published at the end of the twentieth century. It has been re-published many times since in many different countries: sometimes with words, and … [Read more...]
The Illustrated City [Kuvitettu kaupunki]
This challenging film is themed around the social unrest that underpins so many periods of change in European history. The film chronicles the frenetic and politically dramatic passage of time in an unnamed city via the story of an individual wall in … [Read more...]
The Mediterranean [Mediterraneo]
This example of a picturebook dealing with the theme of the migrant crisis is less hopeful than the others. Indeed, the picturebook can be read as a memorial for the lives lost in the passage across the Mediterranean. The story opens with the stark … [Read more...]
The Prince Charming / The Purple Princess [Il principi azurro / La principessa fuxia]
This is the second reversible picturebook in the corpus: the other is the Migrating [Migrando] which is themed around the migrant crisis. The wordless form is to put to use to provide two different ways of consider the same story. One side of the … [Read more...]
