One day, perhaps soon, I’ll build a big boat; that can float like boats and fly like the planes, even though it’s a boat; that can circle the earth and under the water like a boat with wheels, a submarine.
14,00€ – 14,90€
One day, perhaps soon, I’ll build a big boat; that can float like boats and fly like the planes, even though it’s a boat; that can circle the earth and under the water like a boat with wheels, a submarine.
A child thinks about a fantastic journey: sailing the world, crossing countries at war, rescuing animals in danger… to return as a hero.
Anna Castagnoli looks for precision in the word to transcribe the main character’s thoughts and dreams; those that live in the imagination since infancy and allow to build a reality and defend us from it when we don’t like it. The journey, as a metaphor of life, leads the main character to discover the world and to take part, resolving conflicts under difficult circumstances.
Through imagination and fantasy, this young traveller plans adventures, invents situations and builds an identity.
Illustrator Gabriel Pacheco resolves, in a metaphorical key, the idea of the ship-travel and manages to turn any object into an ideal vehicle for the imagination. Thus, an empty cardboard box, something very simple, is transformed with the magic of fantasy. It can be the room itself, which suddenly becomes a surreal place, or a ship that guides us through dreams. But, in reality, one never leaves the space of the house, the place from which all journeys start. Although the illustrations present isolated scenes, they always maintain aesthetic coherence: in the color, the spaces, the characters, the composition… and it is the text that carries the thread of the narrative. To reinforce the plastic proposal, elements such as booties, the child’s toys or other everyday objects end up transforming or evolving within the fantastic scenarios.
In this way, on the one hand, we are provided with clues and suggestions that help us to understand the story, and on the other hand, the suggestive power of the album is multiplied, thus allowing for different levels of reading. In the end, an exciting story that brings us messages of solidarity, essential in the maturation of individuals.
Isaac Díaz Pardo Illustrated Book Award 2009
Text by Anna Castagnoli Illustration by Gabriel Pacheco Translation by Mark W. Heslop
