Bologna finds - Iwona Chmielewska

For a lucky coincidence, as I was about to leave the Korean publishers booth 

at the Bologna Book Fair my friend Giovanni from libriliberi (the best children's

 bookstore in Firenze, not to miss when you're in town) pointed out to me Thinking ABC.

 Having immediately fallen in love with it, I was delighted to find out that I could

 actually buy it, since most books at the fair are not for sale, and I have found myself

 before begging in vain to obtain a copy of a precious new discovery.

Iwona Chmielewska created this unique alphabet book in which every word is illustrated 

in the shape of its initial letter. And for every letter of the alphabet there are ten

 different full page illustrations! As usual, I picked the ones representing animals, but

 scanned the whole double spread for you to enjoy. The artworks are charming, delicate,

 whimsical and witty, and the author's imagination seemingly boundless. Thinking ABC

 won a Golden Apple award at BIB, the Bratislava Biennal of Illustration, in 2007. 

Iwona is a writer, designer and illustrator from Poland, but apparently she is best known and

 loved in Korea, where Nonjang has published five of her very smart, illustration-packed volumes

 (one more, An Accident, is coming out next month). As I researched the web for more information,

 I could only find that another of her books, The blue stick, was recently published in Spanish

 by Grupo Océano. Will any other international publisher please take notice?