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A review by mat_tobin
The Golden Glow by Benjamin Flouw
4.0
There are a lot of texts arising these days which bend the picturebook concept. These fusion texts, which bring together aspects of literary forms, offer us new windows into the shape and style of children’s literature. With The Golden Glow, Flouw presents a synergy between picturebook, information text and picture book in exceeding the 32 page format through longer stretches of narrative (well translated by Morelli and Ouriou).
The Golden Glow tells the story of an anthropomorphic botanist fox who seeks out the forenamed plant missing from his botany books. On his journey up the mountain, he encounters several anthropomorphic guides who point him upon the right path. Much like the scene in which the keyhole reveals itself to Bilbo in the Hobbit, Fox discovers the Golden Glow much to his delight and instead of plucking it and taking it home to place in a vase, he chooses to sketch and study it knowing that its place there is more important.
A celebration of the nature lover which one hopes resides in all of us, The Golden Glow invites us to take in deep breaths as we walk through the pine mountains of Flouw’s polygon world. Whilst white spaces envelop the inside, plenty of earthy, warm colours flood the pages when we go outside. The fusion text presents us with single and double page spreads alongside informative, labelled spreads which display Fox’s expeditionary inventory, flower sketches, heights of mountains and list of plants. The book becomes part imaginary field-guide and part story.
I found this a wonderful ode to respecting the natural world and discovering it too. A book for our times.
The Golden Glow tells the story of an anthropomorphic botanist fox who seeks out the forenamed plant missing from his botany books. On his journey up the mountain, he encounters several anthropomorphic guides who point him upon the right path. Much like the scene in which the keyhole reveals itself to Bilbo in the Hobbit, Fox discovers the Golden Glow much to his delight and instead of plucking it and taking it home to place in a vase, he chooses to sketch and study it knowing that its place there is more important.
A celebration of the nature lover which one hopes resides in all of us, The Golden Glow invites us to take in deep breaths as we walk through the pine mountains of Flouw’s polygon world. Whilst white spaces envelop the inside, plenty of earthy, warm colours flood the pages when we go outside. The fusion text presents us with single and double page spreads alongside informative, labelled spreads which display Fox’s expeditionary inventory, flower sketches, heights of mountains and list of plants. The book becomes part imaginary field-guide and part story.
I found this a wonderful ode to respecting the natural world and discovering it too. A book for our times.