Description
A mosquito offers to help an old man to discover the tastiest piece of meat, and free him from a terrible snake that wants to eat him. In compensation the old man provides the insect with iron dentures so that no victim can resist, and the smart insect will take advantage to let itself be taken up by its voracity…
In a humoristic key, this traditional Chinese tale, of an aetiological nature, reveals why the mosquito, instead of speaking, emits a buzzing sound as if it were a war cry.
The reader can follow the adventures of some characters that show how justice and solidarity triumph over size and strength, in a story that brings us close to the traditional culture of a people that, for centuries, had as their form of expression that voice which is now prolonged in writing.
The text is characterized by its simplicity and for being very entertaining; the humour, which is always present in Roger Olmos’s illustrations, is more than justified.
In this work by Roger Olmos his personal and characteristic volumetric deformations appear, providing a curious perspective of the characters, of “boterian” reminiscence perhaps not intended. The human characters are masculine (old man, blacksmith, boys…), the fantastic characters are animals (snake, mosquito, bird, swallow, mouse…); a profitable opposition to tell in images a story that seems more like a lesson in anthropology than, paraphrasing Kipling, could be titled Why do snakes eat mice?
The plastic proposal Roger Olmos presents in Mosquito brings together the characteristics we have become used to in his illustrated album works which could constitute his mark of identity in these types of proposals: conclusive oil painting in an absolute predominant relation over the text that scrupulously respects the double page of the literary-plastic narrative.
Text by Margarita del Mazo, taken from a traditional Chinese tale
Illustrations by Roger Olmos
Translation by Mark W. Heslop
