On the program today, the latest album by the author and illustrator Delphine Perret, whose work we have been following for a long time. She has published around thirty works – you may know her series featuring the bear Björn, which was a success or the very beautiful The most beautiful summer in the world released a few years ago. This latest album, which has just been published by Les Fourmis Rouges, has a title that is as delightful as it is misleading: it is called, quite simply, The Big Book. Gold The Big Book is a very small book, 9 centimeters by 12, in other words it fits in the palm of a hand. On the other hand, the big book is thick, it has a large number of pages – 184 to be exact, during which we are offered about twenty stories or short sketches featuring various, non-recurring characters – humans, animals or bizarre shapes.
Philosophical and absurd sketches
These stories are broadly of two types. Some of these sketches can be read as little philosophical tales that explore questions such as: should we prefer the company of a soft and mortal cat to that of a not-so-soft but eternal pebble? (answer: it’s as we wish); What do we need to live? (Answer: running, eating, water, sleeping, but above all: someone to send a letter to); or, an important question: Why is it better not to make fun of very small dogs? … The characters and the style of the stories are heterogeneous, but by their absurd dimension, they evoke a little the world of Peanuts by Schulz (it seems to us that one of the very small dogs looks a bit like Snoopy). The simple and fine line, the choice of black and white, the roundness of the figures, the very airy character of the very small pages: all this spreads a form of softness, of appeasement. Appeasement which also seems to me to be at the heart of the stories of a second nature, which stage heroes who are not heroes. There is for example, Super content, the superhero with the head of a dino whose super power resides essentially in the fact of being often, super happy. There is also Henri, the duck gifted at everything – who knows how to fold the sheets, play chess, who has often had tea with the Queen of England but who prefers to live simply among his family. There is also Mi, the clumsy chick since birth, clumsy when he walks, clumsy when he eats – and besides his friends know it, they like him like that; Me, who answered the worried question that one of his friends asked him one day: ” What will become of you, Mi? » answers, simply: « I will become a clumsy chicken! “. One might think that all this makes no sense, and besides, it makes no sense, it’s like life – but without seeming to, a form of comfort emerges from each of these little stories. As if someone were whispering to us: it’ll be okay, nothing’s serious, with a little humor, we’ll get through it in the end. Like this quote from Boris Vian, placed at the beginning of the book: “An exit is an entrance that you take in the other direction.”
Comfort, in substance and in form
Nothing would have been said about this book if we did not dwell a little on the way it is constructed. The Big Book has a summary, a neat layout, chapter headings written in black ink on a beautiful red background, and a quality binding. It is also punctuated by interludes, some of which invite us to take a short break from reading, by closing our eyes and counting to 5. We can guess the desire to awaken the youngest to the pleasure of books, but with the concern of not sanctifying them. The album thus opens with an address to the reader, advising them to settle down as they wish to begin reading, the drawings suggesting a duvet, a cupboard, grass or the shoulder of a big teddy bear to settle down on. At the end of these few pages in the form of practical advice, we are suddenly asked: “And also, was your day good?”. The desacralization also comes through this way of establishing a form of conversation between the author and her reader. You don’t have to read the big book in one go, you can pick and choose, a story here, a story there, before going to sleep for example, or whenever you want. In short, the big book proclaims, loud and clear, in substance and in form, that reading is a pleasure – and the pleasure you get from reading it is inversely proportional to its size.
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The Big Book by Delphine Perret, Les fourmis rouges editions
