Illustration from Lulu Lima: The owl told me. The strangest stories from nature.
Science has long had answers and theories to questions like: Why does the giraffe have such a long neck? But do assumptions like the one that giraffes get their preferred food better because of their long necks, that bulls with long necks prevail over rivals, or that their slim, elongated body shape protects them from overheating, provide material for entertaining stories? Isn’t it nicer to imagine that when the giraffe was playing hide and seek with the ostrich, its head got stuck in a hole in the ground and that its neck got longer and longer because of the pulling of the other animals that wanted to free it from its predicament and got longer – as Lulu Lima and Jana Glatt tell in their colorful picture book?
Why is it raining? How did porcupines come about? Why does the sunset turn the sky orange?
Without a doubt, it is a pleasure to get involved with the stories translated from Portuguese by Florencia Heine, some of which are reminiscent of Rudyard Kipling’s “Just So Stories” (1902), and also find unexpected answers to the following questions: Why is it raining? How did porcupines come about? Why does the sunset turn the sky orange? It is a brightly colored world of possibilities that this picture book opens up; the cheerfulness of the mixed media pictures, which play with color surfaces, shapes, patterns and perspectives, is contagious. And the invitation at the end of the book to find the origins of natural phenomena yourself is an invitation and challenge to children and parents to give their imagination space and to let the love of tales run free, as the two Brazilian artists show us here . (from 6 years) Marlene Zöhrer
Lulu Lima: The owl told me. The strangest stories from nature. With illustrations by Jana Glatt. Translated from the Portuguese by Florencia Heine. Helvetiq, Basel 2021. 40 pages, 14 euros.