14,00€
ONE was a very small number. Always alone and jealous of the others, that seemed so superior. One day, King Minus gave him the plans to build a terrible weapon: the MINUS sign.
More info
ONE was a very small number. Always alone and jealous of the others, that seemed so superior. One day, King Minus gave him the plans to build a terrible weapon: the MINUS sign.
Making symbolic and metaphorical use of the mathematical operation of subtraction, Juan Darién brings us closer to the injustice of wars originating in the erroneous interpretation of all that which is different, supposes a threat. This work is dedicated to disarming such a fallacy and accentuates in affirming that knowledge of others enriches and magnifies: it does not subtract, it adds.
Darién makes an iconographical proposal of a marked warlike setting through a representation technique —digital collage— of a simple structure and primary forms, multiplied under the effects of a constructive-plastic treatment as elemental as effective from a chromatic point of view.
A story for peace that uses concepts such as slavery, abuse, resolution of conflicts…, but also a didactic tool to get to know codes and mathematical processes by reason of the motivation it provokes, the attitude created and the mediation the plastic language exercises and the literary narrative in understanding the abstract concepts.
For that, it’s used an expressive typographic play reserved for the main characters, which strengthens the understanding of a proposal that tries to bring closer a mathematical concept to readers not very advanced and that, in any case, allows enjoyment of a discipline that is understood more as use is made of it.
And all in a package full of universal values such as freedom, peace, respect towards others and to the difference.
CJ 1st Picture Book Awards Illustration Prize 2008
Text and illustrations by Juan Darién
Translation by Mark W. Heslop
