Elephants Never Forget!, written by Anushka Ravishankar, and illustrated by Christiane Pieper, is a tale of a lost elephant who finds a new home amongst a herd of buffalo. Even when his own kind return and he has an opportunity to return to them, he opts to stay with his new found friends and play with them.
Continuing my current interest in picture books using printmaking, this book is illustrated throughout with two-colour prints (they look like woodcuts but could be lino), a striking combination of black and periwinkle blue. There is definitely the touch of a computer here and there, but I love the hand-done roughness of much of the images, and the changes of scale are dramatic and bring the story to life. The book design is also striking with some bold graphic use of text , particularly words describing sounds (splitter! splatter! Chitter! Chatter!).
This book was originally published in India and apparently issued with textured papers, which would be lovely along with the prints, especially as many pages use large areas of white (or rather buff) to great effect.
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