Best illustrated books all over the world
Pim is the youngest in his family, but he’s determined to be captain of the boat. While the grown-ups doubt him, Pim is busy fighting “ice people” with hot pancake cannonballs and steering the table upside-down like a ship. Imagination makes him taller than his years, until the day comes […]
When you’re the only pink armadillo in a family of nine green ones, you can’t help but stand out. This little fellow decides the best way to shine is to be better at everything — and he’s not shy about saying so. His bragging grows as fast as his ambitions, […]
Chris Raschka’s The Blushful Hippopotamus (1996) is about a little hippo named Roosevelt. He blushes easily, especially when things go wrong or he feels clumsy. At first, his older sister teases him, and she looks so big on the page that Roosevelt seems tiny and unsure. He has a friend, […]
Books conceal magical worlds where someone is always hiding in a dark forest, unreachable kingdoms lie beyond the mountains, and the seas and oceans are ruled by the elements. Each fairy-tale setting has its own symbolism and its own origin story. And the illustrators are the very wizards who brings […]
«Secret River», illustrated by Leonard Weisgard, was first published in 1955, after the death of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. The story follows a girl named Calpurnia from a poor family, who, during the Great Depression, sets out with her puppy in search of a mysterious river to help feed her village. […]
Taught by bitter experience, Little Red Riding Hood has put together a handbook on how to trick a wolf, with a dozen unusual tactics. Among them: feeding the wolf pastries with hot chili pepper, competing to see who hides best, wearing a wolf costume on the way to the forest, […]
Dizzy (2006) is Jonah Winter’s picture-book biography of jazz great Dizzy Gillespie, brought to life with Sean Qualls’s bold, rhythmic art. Winter tells Gillespie’s story with a text that bounces and swings, echoing the playful, unpredictable nature of Dizzy’s music. It isn’t a dry retelling of dates and facts — […]
In 1897, the Gallery Arnold in Dresden exhibited several unusual watercolors with scenes from the life of flowers, created by a young and little-known Swiss artist, Ernst Kreidolf. The drawings caught the attention of several children’s book publishers, and a year later Kreidolf’s first illustrated story, “Flower Fairy Tale” (Blumenmärchen), […]
David Wiesner is known for his surreal, wordless picture books. One of his most celebrated works is “Tuesday”. On a Tuesday evening, around eight o’clock, a group of frogs suddenly takes off from their swamp and soar over the town, flying into houses and scaring people around — only to […]
In Alessandro Sanna’s nearly wordless book, the reader follows the four seasons along the Po River, witnessing the flow of time and the lives of characters who become part of the current. Soft watercolor transitions capture the first rays of dawn, twilight in the reeds, and storm-darkened skies. The horizontal […]
The river can symbolize the flow of life: at first clear and untouched, gradually filling with new colors, events, and encounters. In Michael Roher’s book, the reader follows the river, drifting alongside the red-haired girl who is the main character. As she journeys, the girl grows up, falls in love, […]
In his book, Peter presents fascinating facts about landmarks, animals, and historical events through the shapes of real rivers. His rivers become living witnesses to both momentous global events and smaller, yet no less intriguing ones. Thus, the book makes room for stories ranging from the evolution of men’s headwear […]
In Marc Martin’s book, the power of children’s imagination transforms an ordinary river into an endless journey: cities, jungles, sunlit fields, forests with deer, and the ocean. The girl floats along the river in a small boat, and on each spread a new landscape unfolds before her. Martin uses collage, […]
Original title: Река Elena Safonova presents the river as a symbol of human progress in her 1930 picture book. Its course carries the reader from villages and wooden bridges to steamships, railways, power stations, and apartment blocks, and finally flows into the open sea. Here, the river becomes a force […]
Original title: Istoriya staroy kvartiry A large-scale, bright work by artist Anya Desnitskaya and writer Alexandra Litvina, “The History of an Old Apartment,” reveals the history of everyday life in the Soviet and, to some extent, pre-revolutionary periods. The reader is presented with a panorama of events in a large […]
Original title: Белая лебёдушка 33 illustrations are made in black and white lithography, and will certainly cause another discussion about whether a book with such pictures can be considered a children’s book. The artist himself said in one of his interviews that all his fairy-tale characters are the personification of […]
This tender story follows a little girl who wants to find just the right birthday present for her mother. Unsure what to choose, she turns to Mr. Rabbit for advice, and together they imagine gifts as colorful and delightful as the world around them. Charlotte Zolotow’s lyrical text is paired […]
In this small, rhythmic book, Sendak takes the reader through all twelve months of the year, with each month linked to the cozy idea of eating chicken soup with rice. The simple rhymes are fun to read aloud, and the drawings are full of little jokes and charm. It’s a […]
Thomas Perino is a French artist and illustrator who draws in a minimalist and abstract manner. His illustrations are reminiscent of Art Deco arabesques, referring to the pure geometry of Art Nouveau.
Woody Guthrie’s song text bounces with the rhythm of hammers, saws, and nails. The words echo the clatter of tools — “bling blang, hammer with my hammer, zing-o zang-o, cutting with my saw…” — and turn the work of building into a noisy game. The lines move like a chant, […]