Francesca Sanna’s illustrated story, inspired by her meetings with refugees, ‘will move all readers, whatever their age’
From Julia Donaldson’s mouse who “took a stroll through the deep dark wood” to the classic Rosie’s Walk, the journey is an archetype of children’s literature. The Italian artist Francesca Sanna, however, who has won the 2017 Klaus Flugge prize for most exciting newcomer to children’s picture book illustration, chose a rather tougher trek for her debut title: that of a mother and her two children who are fleeing a war.
Sanna’s The Journey opens with an ordinary family playing on a beach by the city, using images that are redolent of classic fairytales, and simple text told from a child’s perspective. But “one day the war took my father”, and eventually the mother takes her children away to what she tells them will be a “safe place”. They face hurdles – an angry border guard, magnified to the size of a monster, turns them back; they hide in the forest; they cross the sea. “There is not much space and it rains every day, but we tell each other stories. Tales of terrible and dangerous monsters that hide beneath our boat ready to gobble us up if the boat capsizes!”
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