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 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...]
The Return [O Regresso] (Film)
This is a short film with a picturebook version. A woman returns home from her exciting life in the city to visit her grandmother, but finds that she is a giant compared to her, representing her sense of maturity and new-found independence. However, … [Read more...]
The Surprise [La surprise]
In this picturebook Janik Coat represents the crisis of a family pet after the introduction of a firstborn child. The family cat knows something is amiss – can the reader work out what? As the couple’s pregnancy develops, the cat grows more and more … [Read more...]
