Mirette in Barcelona - Éditions Sarbacane

For those readers who are passionate with Mirette's adventures (Mirette is the young detective matched by her faithful Catssistant Jean-Pat), there is a nice new: in about ten days a new episode of the series Les Enquêtes de Mirette, is going to appear in bookshops and it's located in... Barcelona!

After the first episode, that appeared in February 2008 and was titled Panique à Paris, where Mirette and Jean-Pat solve the mystery  whose protagonists are the opera singer Sissi Bemol, the manager of the Paris Opéra Theatre Henri Rideau (also known as Riri) and Mirette's neighborthe watchmaker Julius Taktik and the envious concierge Germaine Choublan (Taktik's cousin)...

and after the second episode, appeared in February 2009 under the title Big Frousse à Londres, where the niece of the famous detective Jean-Patrick Lelièvre is drawn in the British capital thanks to a phone call by her great-aunt Dorothy, and where Mirette will be involved in a deep mystery connected to a weird butler...

now Sarbacane is about to publish the third episode of the series,  with the title

Qué Calor à Barcelone! by Fanny Joly, illustrations by Laurent Audouin, Editions Sarbacane, February 2010


I must confess I'm wondering what Fanny Joly and Laurent Audouin brilliant minds might have invented this time. What I know for sure is that we won't get bored, by the way it would be impossible with the pressing rhythms that the adventures of Mirette and her detecticat Jean-Pat's always have: amid a Choumoullouws (feline marsh-mellow) and another, driven through more or less mysterious places thanks to the fantastic Super Zécran Tactile (an indispensable tool for any good detective), Mirette and Jean-Pat inevitably involve us and let us discover some of the most famous cities in the world.

Now, for the love of my country, I am wondering when and if our two inseparable friends will land in Rome for a new adventure! We might learn more about this by reading the very interesting blog by Laurent Audouin where, together with a few previews on the series new projects, we might find some very interesting information about the artistic creation, on how images and settings are imagined, on the use of old objects to make the scenario more credible and much more.

While we wait until the new book is available in bookshops, we can always refresh our memories by reading the first two episodes.



Images were reproduced with the permission of Sarbacane Publishing House.
Copyright images and texts Ed. Sarbacane © 2008-2009-2010

Quelles Couleurs by Régis Lejoinc

"Un jour je me suis rendu compte que je n'avais pas vraiment de couleur préférée. Ce que je sais, c'est que si le monde était sans couleurs, il ne serait pas noir et blanc, comme dans les vieux films."* these are a couple of sentences from the foreword of this new book by Régis Lejoinc.

Published by Thierry Magnier Publishing House at the end of 2009, Quelles Couleurs, is a really surprising book, full of evocations and unusual matchings. It's a lively and poetic book, fun, full of life and little things, as if the content of a kid's secret box were emptied on the page and a whole little world, made of simple though precious things, had been printed on it.

In a very interesting interview appeared on the blog of the Magazine La Citrouille, Lejoinc tells how the idea of the book came along. The author explains that it all begun with an observation regarding his work as illustrator: he in fact explains that he realized being more an illustrator-story-teller that an illustrator-decorator, that all his creative efforts were better when instinctive much more than rational, that for him the atmosphere of illustrations was more central than their purely graphic quality, that as he likes several styles when drawing he is led more by text's evocations than by a stylistically univocal interpretation.

Not having limits for what matters style, and having the ability to undertake them, made it possible for R. Lejoinc to produce this heterogeneous and amusing treasure. As you will see from the examples here below, the author is in fact confronting several techniques...

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The twelve colors to which the book is devoted are introduced by pages where their nuances are named in the most different ways, a few examples: nymph-thigh pink or hind-belly white or goose-poo yellow and many others.

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If you're interested in getting more information on this subject, the colors' names have been taken from this site: http://www.pourpre.com/

But fun is not over yet: Quelles Couleurs is in fact an interactive book as well, kids could play with it by coloring, solving little problems, learning new things...

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A whole universe, where Fantomas meets James Brown and Hulk could go arm in arm with the members of the Addams family, is narrated in two-hundred pages that capture attention without leaving space to the smallest yielding. A book to leaf through until its pages fall apart!


* "One day I realized that I had no real favourite color. What I know is that, if the world were without colors, it would not be in black and white like in old moovies."



For more information on the Publisher Thierry Magnier, please go to: http://www.editions-thierry-magnier.com/


Images have been reproduced with permission of the Publishing HouseThierry Magnier.
Copyright images and texts Ed. Thierry Magnier © 2009