author/illustrator: Anne-Margot Ramstein/Matthias Arégui
ages: 4+
56 pages
19.5 x 27 cm
hardback
La Partie
sold: Korean, Simplified Chinese, Spanish (Latin America)
The Pearl
About this book
This thought-provoking yet moving textless book questions the relativity of the value of things.
A child discovers a pearl in the ocean, and adds it to a ring he made for his girlfriend. At night, a bird steals the pearl and brings it to its nest, where a cat finds it. Here starts for the pearl a long journey that will take it from a queen’s crown to a maple syrup bottle through a salmon’s stomach.
At the end of the book, the pearl has found its way back to the boy
from the beginning, who has become an old man. Astonished, he puts the pearl back on the home-made ring and offers it to the woman he is still in love with after all these years.
Throughout the book, each of the characters appropriating the pearl has their specific motive (love, cupidity) and uses it differently (a sign of power, a simple toy), showing how its value changes depending on who owns it.- By award-winning authors Anne-Margot Ramstein and Matthias Arégui (Bologna Ragazzi Award 2015).
- An extraordinary story entirely carried by the images which offer an easy understanding while leaving room for imagination.