Joann Sfar The Little Prince Adapted From The Book by Antoine De Saint-Exupery.

Joann Sfar The Little Prince Adapted From The Book by Antoine De Saint-Exupery.

This is a graphic novel adaptation of The Little Prince. Joann Sfar is french and has drawn over one hundred books. I especially loved his graphic novel, The Rabbi's Cat about a cat that eats a parrot and then can talk. The Little Prince  is translated from French into English by Sarah Ardizzone.

Joann Sfar's drawings are vibrant. They are very good at showing emotion. I like the flow of how he draws the characters in the story. The colorist Brigitte Findaklay uses lots of earth tones mixed with some very deep reds, sky blues, and bright greens. The characters have a lot more color than the backgrounds which makes them stand out.

The panel layout is two columns of three panels. This is very easy to follow. The lettering has a neat, small hand drawn quality to it. The characters have a slightly exaggerated faces with bigger eyes, ears and some fantastic qualities, especially for the flower people.

The Little Prince has a surprising amount of philosophical depth for a childrens story. Joann Sfar successfully translates the writing which is often very surreal into clear, beautiful pictures. 

I especially like the drawings of the Little Prince talking to flowers, the fox, and the snake.  Each character the prince talks to has a seemingly simple philosophical message.

This is worth reading, especially if you like fairytales or fables. The novel, The Little Prince is a childrens classic

Daily Thoughts 5/21/2009

N.C. Wyeth in his Studio, ca. 1903-04, He was a student of Howard Pyle and illustrated Boys King Arthur. I like the style of illustration he uses.

Daily Thoughts 5/21/2009

I may actually have a use for Twitter. A while ago I was discussing web sites for collection development on Twitter. Some of the twitterers mentioned a number of young adult web sites for collection development.

The Harris Poll: http://www.harrisinteractive.com/news/newsletters_k12.asp

Bulletin For the Center of the Childrens Book http://bccb.lis.illinois.edu/

http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/yalsa/booklistsawards/booklistsbook.cfm YALSA book awards

Today has been a quiet day. I am having someone replace plastic book covers on the book. They get old, wear out, and have things spilled on them. Also, they need to be cleaned sometimes. I am doing little mundane things like this today.

I also spent some time ordering a few titles from the Indiebound bestseller lists which are designed for independent bookstores. I rather like them, they are put together by the American Booksellers Association.