Portuguese / Portugal
A cidade dos animais
(The city of the animals)
Negrescolor, Joan
(text/illus.)
Oliveira, Carla
(ed./transl.)
Lisboa: Orfeu Negro, 2017. – [36] p.
ISBN 978-989-8327-99-4
Nature | Civilisation | Forest | City | Picture book
Reading age: 5+
White Ravens issue: 2017
The book of Catalan artist Joan Negrescolor (b. 1978) will intoxicate readers with intense colours and fabulous forms. A lush world reveals itself in swirling and shining reds, yellows, greens, and turquoises. We are seeing the remains of an apparently abandoned or destroyed city, overgrown by the jungle and inhabited by wild animals. A girl named Nina loves to visit the city to tell the animals of the past days of the world of human beings. The book’s short text is ambiguous and leaves many things in the air. It seems most like a prophetic vision of a future where the disappearance of human civilization is not a grim dystopia, but rather a lively utopia. Nature takes back what humans have taken away from it. Across large double-page spreads, the silhouettes of plants, animals, buildings, and objects layer one on top of the other or merge. They aptly visualize the concept of the book, where artifacts gradually disappear behind vigorous, powerful nature.