Translation Rights TQE / Saturday. What are we going to do today?

Simon is a collection of illustrated books for children between the ages of two and six (though older young readers and also adults will enjoy it...).

The different titles in the collection seek to show the first steps in the life of a child and the gradual discovery of the world through every day life: relationships with loved ones – the parents mostly –, the importance of family (whatever form it takes), the first friends, the beginning of a life in society (pre-school, children’s parties, parents’ gatherings with friends,…) the learning of rules and everyday  rituals (hygiene, bedtime, sitting down for a meal, accepting the time that parents dedicate to themselves,…), the importance of traditions (Christmas and other holidays) and of special days (the movies, family and class trips, a visit to the science museum…)

On the one hand, the collection is part of a genre that goes beyond classic children’s literature: it explores the child’s everyday life using greatly detailed illustrations with which the young reader can identify. But yet through these every day childhood events, so orderly, so conservative and loving, other elements are introduced which “distort” the traditional family and social models that books of this genre insist on using time and time again. In fact, the protagonist, a kid of about three or four, is the only child of separated parents, and thus his everyday life will revolve around this fact. The mother works, goes out at night, her brother is the babysitter, Simon often watches TV… In future titles we will learn that the father has a girlfriend (and they might have a child together), the mother’s sister might adopt a Chinese girl, the cleaning lady will probably be an immigrant… And what is most interesting and useful is to treat all these subjects from a natural perspective, without a sentiment of guilt which, after all, exists only in the adult world.

This collection, to sum up, is an attempt to modernise some of the fixed patterns in children’s literature and to break a few taboos on the way, but with one essential condition: this “revision” does not receive a dramatic nor traumatic treatment.

Juliet Pomés Leiz was born in Barcelona in 1963. She studied Architecture and Fine Arts in Barcelona and Painting in Italy. She is the author, along with Ricardo Feriche, of Barcelona Design Guide, edited by Gustavo Gili. From 1989 until 1992 she designed the covers for the magazine Districte, and later did book covers for publishing houses such as Anagrama and Mondadori, as well as other illustrations for newspapers and magazines. Since 1992, and after a brief but fruitful period in New York, she has alternated her career as an illustrator and a painter, and her work has been exposed in various galleries in Barcelona and Madrid. She is the mother of two children, and motherhood provoked a turn in her career, which added to her talent as an illustrator, has brought her to enter the world of children’s literature.