- Everyday Life
- Picture Books
- Ages 3–10
The shape of it
The shape of this universe.
Beatrice Alemagna is the Italian-born, Paris-based picture-book author and illustrator whose work occupies the literary end of contemporary children's books. Her books look the way nothing else in the bookshop looks: chalky, painted, often mixed-media, sometimes printed on rough paper, with strange textures and slightly melancholic palettes. The subjects are equally distinctive, On a Magical Do-Nothing Day is about a bored child becoming un-bored by a rainy afternoon; The Five Misfits is about embracing imperfection; What Is a Child? is a near-philosophical riff. The Pascaline early-reader series is the more accessible strand. Major-award-decorated in Europe; quietly canonical here.
Quietly singular picture books from one of contemporary Europe's most distinctive author-illustrators, slow, painterly, emotionally precise.
Primary themes
Tone palette
- Warm
- Gentle
- Thought provoking
- Whimsical
The series
One way in.
Cultural footprint
A shelf of evidence.
What Beatrice Alemagna has done
- Major award winner
Cultural ubiquity
3/ 5Well-known to people who know the room.
Sensitivity
Low, and collection-wide.
Across the collection
All 10 books.
About the creator