Bruno Valasse Shelf Picks...
I've been invited to make some book recommendations, and here's a few of them (I would have picked half the bookshop!)...
It may not come as a surprise that I've picked a few modern folktales and cautionary tales, as I feel their deceitful simplicity can convey very strong feelings, metaphors and morals which –even if we've heard them over and over– can always hit the right note and be their own take on modern aspects of the human condition.
The Elephant in the Room / James Thorp & Angus MacKinnon
How things always find their way
There's two elephants in this room. The one that sets off the story by breaking, and the other one: responsibility. Who's to blame for all the ruckus and the byzantine explanations about how the physical elephant came to be broken? A series of events that culminates in a shared solution to this mystery, in a sequence of awe-inducing, art-decoesque masterpieces full of implausible culprits and potential witnesses.
Spider in the Well / Jess Hannigan
A folktale take on the fool of the world
If you're looking for fun, mischievous and hilarious, this is the book for you! As Jon Klassen put it: "I don't trust anyone in this book". Involving a naive newspaper boy, modern neighbour relationships, trust, shame and wit. Oh, and greed.
Jess Hannigan's artwork is stunning, giving vibes of screen printing in its limited-colour-palette and paper textures, as well as deceitfully simple characters.
Extra letter-lover nerd points for a modern Futura-like typeface designed by Honee Jang and Jess Hannigan's lettering.
Time Runs Like a River / Emma Carlisle
A gem for nature lovers and landscape enthusiasts (observational drawing nerds welcome, of course).
Emma Carlisle's ability to lead the reader through the flow of time is a testament of her contagious love of nature as a whole and all of its details.
The artwork has a quintessentially British vibe to it, as well as visual renderings that range from the graphic birds and flowers to the highly detailed protagonist of each page. I particularly appreciate the metaphors about change and the rainbow in the background and the new family moving in, as well as the rhythm synchronicity between the verses on full bleed spreads and vignettes.
You will inevitably slow down to pay attention to your surroundings, listen to the local birds and realise you might have spent a few hours sitting by the river or flicking back and forth through the metaphor-heavy pages of this mouth-drooling piece of art.
Mr Lepron's Mystery Soup / Giovanna Zoboli & Mariachiara Di Giorgio
A tale about celebrating simple things (and vegetables!)
Giovanna Zoboli & Mariachiara Di Giorgio will take you from the depths of the forest to the industrial production of the best soup ever known to anyone: Mr Lepron's Mystery Soup. In the process, the warm lighted pages and the colour palette decompose into dull and acidic tones, leaving a solitary hare to realise something's gone wrong. I can still taste the soup I never tried after staring at Mariachiara Di Giorgio's lush pages for too long.
The Wolf, the Duck and the Mouse / Mac Barnett & Jon Klassen
Why nonsense makes sense or the modern jump into the wolf's mouth
Everything is wrong in this book. The explosive combination of Mac Barnett's humour & Jon Klassen's characters' ability to break the 4th wall justify the unjustifiable: nothing makes sense, yet everything does. A fully stocked house inside a shapeless wolf's tummy –including bedding– as well as the inhabitant's ability to request more by tricking the wolf himself. A cosy home indeed, so much that it has defined what wolf behaviour is like!
Bruno's prints are on show in the shop until 5th October.
To read more about Bruno's visit to Shelf editions, head here.
Thanks for visiting Bruno!
