Mamma Mia!

Victor Pivovarov, 1971

Lena Guberman

Anthony Browne

Helen Borton, Do you go where I go?, 1972

Brian Wildsmith, Wild Animals

Helene Carter, Sharp Ears, 1938

Rare Animals, via HannaRivka

Józef Wilkon

Knud Kyhn

Andy Warhol

Gerry Turley

Óscar Villán

Strong as a Bear

This year, as you may know, I was unable to attend the Bologna Children's Book Fair.

But thanks to the generosity of friends and publishers, and a trip to the very well stocked

Florentine children's book store Cuccumeo, I do have some wonderful new books

to share with you over the next weeks. First of all, once again I am very grateful 

to Topipittori for introducing into our country some of my favorite European illustrators

(besides working with some excellent Italian ones). This new beautiful new volume is a reprint

of Stark wie ein Bär, the 2012 award winning book by the German illustrator Katrin Stangl.

I first took notice of Stangl in 2009 when another invaluable Italian publisher, 

Corraini, published The Musicians of Brehem. I saw her work again at the 2011 Illustrators Exhibition

 in Bologna, and her striking, bold style and two-color linocut technique again made an impression.

Forte comme un orso is an explosion of colorful vitality. The simple text enunciates 

a list of animal qualities that children will easily identify with, and the full page

 illustrations will easily delight adults too. The book's vibrant chromatic quality

was achieved thanks to a printing process using four different pantone colors. 

Screen Play

These eye-popping silkscreen prints were created by The Little Friends of Printmaking,

a husband and wife design duo based in Milwaukee. Melissa and J W Buchanan have been active

 poster artists since 2003, and have been featured in many publications and won the 2006 Young Guns Award.

Their humorous and super colorful visual language, steeped in popular culture such as cartoons and comics,

may looks deceptively simple, but their approach to silkscreening is both complex and refined. 

If you dig them too, you may buy their prints here, and check out an interesting and funny

 2009 interview on Grain Edit, where you'll find out about their background, working methods,

 like and dislikes, the origin of their name, and more.

Russian Riddles

I photographed this lovely folk style book in the Russian booth at the Bologna Book Fair 

last April, but didn't feel like posting it because I didn't have any info about it.

Finally, thanks to a cyrillic decoder and Google Translator, the mystery is solved!

Titled White hare, where have you run? (thanks to quete and reset for the correct

 translation) and illustrated by Karinna Germanovna Pretro, it's a compilation

of traditional songs, nursery rhymes, riddles, tongue twisters and lullabies.

(Now, if only I could find a bit of information about the illustrator...) 

Update: this info is now available in the comments to this post.

Many thanks to Maria, quete and Irina for the data and links!