Japanese / Japan
Toya no hikkoshi
(Toya’s moving)
Ichinnorov, Ganbaatar
(text)
Baasansuren, Bolormaa
(illus.)
Tōkyō: Fukuinkan Shoten, 2015. – 32 p.
(Series: Sekai kessaku ehon shirīzu)
ISBN 978-4-8340-8140-4
Journey | Picture book | Mongolia | Nomad
Reading age: 4+
White Ravens issue: 2016
Mongolian illustrator Bolormaa Baasansuren and her husband Ganbaatar Ichinnorov have been working together in Japan for several years. Their beautiful picture books, based on their cultural heritage, have found international appreciation. With its detailed colourful illustrations calling to mind miniature paintings, their most recent picture book, “Toya no hikkoshi”, depicts the life of Mongolian nomads. One day in late spring, a family sets off on a long journey to the grasslands. Over the course of their journey, wolves attack their sheep at night and a heavy storm comes, but still they make their way with camels, horses, sheep and goats through the steppe, the Gobi Desert and a high mountain. A straight horizontal line stretches across the book’s very wide double-page spreads. The captivating illustrations of the spectacular landscapes and the nomadic life – living in a ger, cooking and sleeping outside during the journey and playing the morin khuur, the Mongolian horsehead fiddle – expand young readers’ minds and worlds.