Blexbolex (1)Reseñas

122000

Gorgeous screen prints. Beautiful! Marvelous! Clever juxtapositions of words and pictures. But not really a book for little children. More like a coffee table book to be enjoyed by folks who like art.

The illustrations were lovely! But to be honest, I have no idea what happened in this book. Or how vacations factor in.

French illustrator Blexbolex uses colorful screen prints paired with one-word-per-page text to bring readers through the seasons of the year. Some pairings are straightforward – a picture of a butterfly with the word BUTTERFLY – while others require a little examination and consideration, like the illustration of a boy walking in the autumn woods with the word DELIGHT. Although not a story in the traditional sense, Seasons does tell its own sort of tale as it winds its way through a familiar (though occasionally disjointed) ordering of images largely focused on the natural world: wind, rain, harvest, fireflies. Adults may also notice more subtle connections (“TRAFFIC JAM” followed by “CATERPILLAR CRAWL,” for instance) and allusions to well-known stories and artworks. This is a book to enjoy aesthetically and talk through with your child, most likely a little bit at a time.

TEACHER TIP: Use this book to engage students at all levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Sample questions include:
-List pictures and words that showed winter. (remembering)
-Why do you think the author chose to pair this word with this picture? (understanding)
-Choose a page and tell about an experience you’ve had with the idea/activity shown. (applying)
-Construct a seasons timeline using images/words from the book. (analysis)
-What pages would you move or remove and why? (evaluating)
-Create a story to tell what is happening on this page. (creating)
-Create your own seasons book with seasonal images and words from your own experience. (creating and applying)

Een prachtig vormgegeven prentenboek. Een leuke manier om de seizoenen te koppelen aan de ervaringen van een lerend kind. Wel zijn enkele van de worden, zoals kwetsuur en somberheid, wellicht buiten de bevattingswereld van het jonge kind.

This book is just a collection of simple illustrations of different professions and characters ("teacher", "warrior", "homeless man") done in the 1960s-schoolbook style. There's no reason this should be entertaining, but it is in fact charming and addictive. The interpretations are just interesting enough to poke your imagination, but not so quirky they lose their dictionary quality. Pairings on opposing pages are often quite clever, and sometimes touching. A surprisingly rich and likeable book.

A child walks home from school enjoying her surroundings, but as the story progresses the world becomes more complex, darker, and terrifying.

I picked up this book for my almost 11 year old daughter but I read it first. The format is so different and interesting and the pictures are incredible. It is a rare talent when you can use few words and pictures to develop a story. Very well done. I can understand why the book was so highly recommended. The only reason I gave three stars is that I probably won't read again but I did consider this to be a very good read (I give a description of my rating system on my profile) and I am going to bug my daughter to read it ;) Beautiful book.

I picked up this book for my almost 11 year old daughter but I read it first. The format is so different and interesting and the pictures are incredible. It is a rare talent when you can use few words and pictures to develop a story. Very well done. I can understand why the book was so highly recommended. The only reason I gave three stars is that I probably won't read again but I did consider this to be a very good read (I give a description of my rating system on my profile) and I am going to bug my daughter to read it ;) Beautiful book.

Ballad by Blexbolex is one of those books that's hard to pin down. For the purpose of the CYBILs, it is a graphic novel but that's merely a way of saying it's mostly illustrations and it's longer than a picture book.

But it's really more an art piece, an experiment in narrative structure, if you will. At it's most basic level, it's about a journey from home, to school and back again. But this story is told multiple times. Each time it's retold it becomes more complicated and more magical.

Looking beyond the initial story, it's also the tale of The Bandits. They look a bit like the Fox and Cat from Pinocchio and they appear throughout the book doing nefarious things. No matter what it is they are doing, they are listed simply as "The Bandits"

Along with the ever changing story is the ever changing text. The text being just a pair of words per page (usually an article and a noun), rendered in an a looping script, takes on the form of the story. When magic mysteriously turns the town upside down, the text too is inverted. When things are tossed about willy nilly, so are the letters. When things vanish, so does the text.

For an adult, Ballad is a fairly easy read — though one should take time to ponder how the story is told. For younger readers, the script might be difficult. For my daughter who is just now learning how to write and read cursive, Ballad's plot seemed secondary to the the emphasis it puts on testing readers on their ability to read cursive.

Ik zag "Allemaal mensen" een paar weken terug bij vrienden en heb het meteen bij de bibliotheek gereserveerd. Blexbolex is het pseudoniem van een Franse kunstenaar die met zeefdrukken werkt. Op iedere bladzijde staat een gekleurde zeefdruk van een persoon met daarboven een titel wat hij of zij is. Het boek begint met: een meneer, een mevrouw, een koppel, een vrijgezel, een moeder, een baby, een vader en gaat door met mensen als: een lerares, een uitvinder, een sterrenkundige, een lekkerbek, enzovoort. De zeefdrukken zijn eenvoudig maar heel sprekend. Een prachtig boek, zowel voor ouderen als om kinderen kennis te laten maken met kunst.

BRILLIANT. Subversive and beautiful and entrancing.

This concept book is a true triumph of design. The use of form is incredibly creative but also flawlessly intuitive. The image pairings are often quite clever and give the book a loose narrative, following the cyclical progression of the seasons. The book is laced with comedy, whimsy, and tragedy. This range gives the book staying power while maintaining lightheartedness. The simplicity of the text makes the book incredibly accessible to young readers, but the innovative usage of patterns, opacity, perspective, and negative space make it just as engaging for those more mature. I would strongly recommend this book and believe it would be a wonderful addition to any collection.

Design-y goodness. Z didn't dig it quite as much as People. On the other hand, some of the juxtapositions are perfect and fun to parse out: flowering/allergy, bocce/itchy.

Sophisticated, design-y and wonderful. Some concepts/images might be a bit much for youngers or sensitive types. On the other hand, juxtapositions like "conductor/tyrant" are worthy of deep conversation.

When I first saw Seasons in my new book box I moaned "What in the heck was I thinking ordering that?" It only took a few turns of the pages to get the "ahh" moment. Blexbolex's new book is a seasonal feast for the eyes. His use of colors in creating the screen prints bring the images alive and intrigue the mind. The pages take the reader through the seasons catching glimpses of such things as watermelon, traffic jams, delight and silence. You come round again and go through the year which may cause a bit of confusion in the flow, but a note at the end explains "Blexbolex got lost for a while in the pages of his books. He has needed two summers, an autumn, a winter, a spring, several storms and a lot of sunshine to rediscover the seasons for himself." Pick up the book, and rediscover the seasons for yourself too!

Un imagier mettant en regard sur une double page des couples de personnages : un aveugle et un distrait, un nudiste et un homme invisible, un voyageur et une migrante... Avec beaucoup d’humour, les images se font faces et se répondent. Cependant si un lien existe toujours, il est parfois imperceptible. Ainsi l’amoureuse et l’émir sont reliés par un croissant de lune, la secrétaire et le yéti par la position des doigts de la main. La forme des personnages, le choix des couleurs, le lettrage font penser aux pictogrammes des années trente. L’auteur se dit influencé par le mouvement Art Déco et les mouvements artistiques des années 30-40. Blexbolex, alias Bernard Grangé a une formation de sérigraphiste imprimeur. Avant de se lancer dans l’illustration pour la jeunesse, il a réalisé des affiches, des publicités et des illustrations pour magazines et a touché également à la bande dessinée. Un très bel album qui séduira petits et grands, qui a reçu le Goldene Letter 2009, prix du Plus beau livre du monde.

A partir de 3 ans

Bibliothèque de la C.F. Nivelles - JLC

An enormous, 100+ page book of drawings of people. Bachelors and babies. Friends and foes. Biologists and astronomers. All kinds of people. Here together in the same enormous book. Happily together in the same enormous book.

“ COP
ROBBER
FLIGHT ATTENDANT
CAT BURGLAR
MESSENGER
BUSINESS MAN
BUILDER
DEMOLISHER”