Planet Picture Book

Spotlight on

Q&AVietnam

Q&A with Phung Nguyen Quang and Huynh Kim Lien

Phung Nguyen Quang and Huynh Kim Lien are book creators, who live and work together in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. In 2015, their unpublished children’s book ‘The First Journey’ won the Scholastic Picture Book Award. They had written and illustrated...

Vietnam

Vietnam

A new destination, a new book search. It’s different every time. From my notes, it looks like I typed ‘Vietnamese picture books’ in Google and went from there. So how did I decide on my final selection? Read on and you’ll discover a little about my...

Still in the limelight

Portugal

Don’t Cross the Line

A colourful crowd of people build up on the left-hand page of this picture book as a guard under orders forbids them to cross the line (the gutter of the book). Then, a red ball bounces into the right-hand page and soon everyone follows . . . but...

PortugalQ&A

Q&A with Translator Lyn Miller-Lachmann

Lyn Miller-Lachmann is the translator of the picture book ‘Three Balls of Wool (Can Change the World)’ by Henriqueta Cristina, illustrated by Yara Kono and published in 2017 by Enchanted Lion Books in partnership with Amnesty...

Portugal

Three Balls of Wool (Can Change the World)

In this historical picture book set in the 1960s, a family flee Portugal’s dictatorship and end up in Communist Czechoslovakia. They find it difficult to settle into their new home until three balls of wool provide an unexpected colourful solution...

Portugal

Portugal

When I first started researching picture books from Portugal, one name leapt out at me: publishing house and graphic design studio, Planeta Tangerina. Founded in 1999 by four friends, Isabel Minhós Martins, Bernardo P. Carvalho, Madalena Matoso and...

Previous destinations

El Salvador

Talking with Mother Earth/Hablando con Madre Tierra

This collection of bilingual Spanish/English poems recounted by Tetl, a young Pipil Nahua Indian, tell of his close bond with Mother Earth and the taunts he suffers because of his indigenous heritage.  I couldn’t resist slipping a second collection...

El Salvador

Mamá the Alien/Mamá la extraterrestre

In this bilingual picture book (Spanish/English) a young girl finds a card marked “ALIEN” in her mamá’s purse. She thinks her mother really is an extra-terrestrial and decides to research the wider implications of her discovery. In this picture...

El Salvador

Somos como las nubes/We Are Like the Clouds

This collection of bilingual Spanish/English poems recounts the perilous journey undertaken by thousands of children from Central America who are leaving their homelands to seek out a better life in the United States. This is the picture book that...

El Salvador

El Salvador

This leg of the Planet Picture Book journey was prompted by, appropriately enough, a book: Somos como las nubes/We Are Like the Clouds by Jorge Argueta, illustrated by Alfonso Ruano and translated by Elisa Amado. I kept seeing it mentioned – in...