This article is taken from Special children’s author releases. For the seventh year, Release takes youth color and text for the Montreuil Book Fair which opens on November 26th. Find all articles Here.
A long-time illustrator, with a passion for nature and the passage of time, Bernadette Gervais offers A year albums without text that are read first by sight. The work is based on a device: a window and a fixed table edge – an immutable frame – within which reveal, in 24 images, the real variations of a toddler’s life over the course of a year: seasons, games, food, moods. The absence of text gives this visual story an unusual form of purity. It’s not about telling a traditional story but rather about suggesting, evoking, letting a child’s or adult’s imagination fill in the gaps. This “suspension” of the narrative is both a strength and, perhaps, a risk: some readers may feel without a reference point. However, this is where this album succeeds: by not telling one (one) story, all stories have the potential to be revealed. We find in Gervais the techniques he loved – stenciling, engraving, oscillating lines between p
