Where Is Kitty Cat?
The idea behind Marijke Klompmaker’s first solo picture book is a simple one: the cat has gone missing – and the reader is invited to help search various houses in the neighbourhood. But the way the idea is developed is surprising and original.
With a beautifully bold and meandering style, Klompmaker uses pencil, brush and collage to build higgledy-piggledy themed houses with undulating walls. The protagonist, Nova, looks for Polle the cat in the homes of crooks and construction workers, inventors and astronauts, mythical creatures and fictional characters. Every packed picture has its own colour palette, so the cheerful chaos remains a united whole. For anyone who thinks they’ve seen it all, there are additional things to search for at the back of the book.
30 pages
3+
“There are look-and-find books and there are special look-and-find books. This one falls into the second category”
Mishka
The story of how this book came to be is a tale in itself. Over fifteen years ago, Van de Vendel met a family of Afghan refugees. One of the children, Anoush, who was 17 at the time, told him about his dangerous journey to the Netherlands, and the two of them wrote a book about it together.
Upstream
Noor’s mum and dad are fanatical about the environment. That means: no planes, eating vegetarian food, staging playful protest activities and having planning meetings in the living room. This way of life has always been completely natural to Noor. But now that she’s expected to make a fool of herself by dressing up in a homemade polar-bear costume at the next demonstration and no one has even asked her if she actually wants to do it, she decides that enough is enough.
Mushroom & Co
‘You owe the fact that you’re reading this book to fungi. Not because this book wouldn’t be about anything otherwise, but because human beings would never have existed.’ Right from the very first chapter, the biologist Geert-Jan Roebers makes it clear that toadstools and mushrooms aren’t just any old subject. This largely unseen fungal kingdom plays a crucial role in our existence.
The Boy Who Loved the World
It sounds like the most impossible mission ever: Breath, a spirit who resembles an eleven or twelve-year-old boy, has to ensure that his future mother and father fall in love. Otherwise he will never exist for real.
