8.22.2011

Children's Bookshelf: SHIGERU MIWA



For the first in a number of posts sharing some of the strange and pretty books I picked up on my travels this year, I have chosen one of my favorites: Only One Me, a beautiful and surreal children's book written by poet Shuntaro Tanikawa and illustrated by Shigeru Miwa, published by Balloon-sha. I can't find much info about the creator of these great illustrations, but the inside flap of the book teases with thumbnails of three other tantalizing titles by Miwa: It's really like this--, Why don't they ever ask me, and Grandma-- another duo-tone picture which according to Steven Heller's Design Literacy explores a child's emotions observing Alzheimer's disease, a more taboo and personal topic for Japanese children's books. Below I'm posting some extremely crude shots of some of my favorite pages of Only One Me, which you may click to enlarge.

UPDATED: My friend Yasushi has just schooled me on Shuntaro Tanikawa, informing me that not only is he, now over 70 years old, one of the most well-known Japanese poets, but he also wrote both the original "Astro Boy" theme lyrics and co-wrote the screenplay for Kon Ichikawa's film "Tokyo Olympiad." In addition to publishing plentiful books of poetry and children's books he also translated "Peanuts" into Japanese. Wow. Thanks Yasushi!












5 comments:

susalia said...

The illustrations are interesting but the kid in the book seems like he's one step away from confessing to the police that the neighbor's dog made him kill people.

Yasushi said...

Shuntaro Tanikawa is one of the most famous and important poet in Japan after the WWII. Now he is over 70 but doing live show tour with his son Kensaku Tanikawa who is composer and piano player. About 50 years ago he wrote lyrics for the song of japanese first animation TV series "Astro Boy" and he co-wrote screenplay for Kon Ichikawa's film "Tokyo Olympiad". He published about 50 books of poem, about 20 books for children and he translated all of Charles M. Shultz's "Peanuts" for japanese readers. I love his works very much.

ahoi! said...

Wow. So great. Thanks!

mythopolis said...

These illustrations are awesome, and here and there is a pop art influence, at least in my own mind...probably because of the dot shading so typical of Lichtenstein's play off of newspaper comic strip art and that style of printing.

Will, 50Watts.com said...

what a find!