Spanish / Chile
No se lo coma
(Don’t eat it up)
Bertrand, Sara
(text)
Magallanes, Alejandro
(illus.)
Santiago de Chile: Hueders, 2016. – [64] p.
(Series: Hueders niños)
ISBN 978-956-8935-87-0
Question | Philosophizing
Reading age: 7+
White Ravens issue: 2017
This book for readers young and old is strikingly different in terms of both its content and appearance. Thumbing through the pages, one first notices the book’s design: the use of very diverse fonts and font sizes, as well as irregularly placed text on white and light green pages entices readers to look more closely. The playful layout and creative typography, however, do not simply serve as decoration, but mirror the heterogeneity of the voices speaking here. Each of the eight chapters opens with an introductory question, a humorous black-and-white drawing and a short story, in which author Sara Bertrand considers the question. On the subsequent pages, twelve children who helped with the book give their own answers The questions are ones you wouldn’t necessarily expect, such as “Is death ugly?”, “What is the imagination for?” or “Do your parents lie?”. But children find no topic too outlandish to concoct an unexpected, funny, or reflective pronouncement on the matter.