3 minute read
The boy who
BOOK REVIEW
THE BOY WHO
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Author: Juan Berrio From the reader report by: Margareth Santos
The power of El niño que rests on its surprisingly easiness: Luís is a six-year-old boy who, when reading children’s tales or superhero stories, does not stop at the reading itself, but prefers to imagine his own stories or starts to question what he reads.
And it does not take much for Luís to unleash his imagination: a word in the newspaper that his father reads attentively (to the point of not paying attention to him); an encyclopedic collection on the shelf of a grumpy uncle. Here, the boy turns the objective aridity of the encyclopedia into an amazing play of senses by establishing a new order, in which he subverts the alphabetical rigidity.
The stories take place during any given summer of the 1970s, and unfold in landscapes dear to the author’s childhood: Madrid and Huesca. As Juan Berrio explains, the work unveils autobiographical components and serves as a reflection of an era, seen from a fictionalized children’s perspective that the book composes and recovers, but with no nostalgia.
Fantasy and creativity play a core role in this book, and it is evident in the visual composition and the play between speech and silence: the reader has before their eyes a work that excels in working with pale colors, while passages focused on Luís’ imagination explode in colors, in direct opposition to the faded images of the surroundings or of the adult characters. Another important element are the interrogative silences of Luís in the face of adults’ orders, which are so precise as to be astonishing.
El niño que is an exceptional work, striking in its simplicity, refined in its work with colors, fun, and incredibly affective, to the point that any reader can come to rescue the Luís that exists within them. And this is no mere self-help slogan.
PUBLISHED IN NEW SPANISH BOOKS BR
NUEVO NUEVE EDITORES
Title THE BOY WHO EL NIÑO QUE
Author Juan Berrio Genre Comic Pages 128
ISBN 978-84-17989-30-9 Year of publication 2020 Number of editions 1 Language Spanish Spanish retail price 20.00 €
Author’s biography: The author, who was born in Valladolid but has spent his whole life in Madrid, has devoted himself for over thirty years dedicated to illustration, comics, and other aspects of the graphic industry, showcasing his art -vignettes, drawings, or photographs- in very different media. He has published in all kinds of magazines (BusinessWeek, NewsWeek, L ’expansion, MarieClaire, Elle, GQ, Quo, Cinemanía, Jot Down…) as well as newspapers (El País, El Periódico de Catalunya, ABC…). He has also worked in advertising. Since his beginnings in Madriz magazine, he has never stopped writing and drawing comics, and collaborating with all kinds of publications. He has founded, alone or with others, fanzines and magazines such as “La maleta”, “AEIOU” and “Usted está aquí.”
www.juanberrio.es
Synopsis: The Boy Who is a graphic novel that tells about a particular time and its customs (a summer in the Seventies), and pays special attention to the way wit and imagination can be more powerful that traditional, self-repeating fantasy. It shows the wanderings of Luis, a six-year-old boy. Tiny adventures dealing with fantasy, imagination, and wit, those powerful faculties and mechanism of the mind for learning, entertainment, and relating to the reality and the people all around us. Luis cannot understand the fantasy in children’s stories, superhero comics, and religious stories, yet he enjoys e ordinary things such as the relationship between seemingly disparate objects and situations (the order of things, their similarities and differences ...), or simply enjoys looking at books upside down.
Publisher: Nuevo Nueve Editores Publishing house specialising in graphic novels, comics, illustration and children’s stories.
Publishing rights available from: Nuevo Nueve Editores - CIF B88382684 Juan Álvarez de Mendizábal 25, local Dcha, Madrid, Madrid www.nuevonueve.com Contact: Ricardo Esteban Plaza [ricardo@nuevonueve.com] [rodolfo@nuevonueve.com]
Phone: (+34) 639 337 347
Comments: A graphic novel that teaches us to see life from a different point of view, that of a child in the ‘70s, awakening our imagination and our memories of those childhood friends who only wanted to play.
