Violeta Lopiz – illustratör

A lyrical book about the adventure of life, The Forest is also a magnificent visual work, both painterly and a technical feat of paper engineering. Here, sensory experience and the textures of the material world are rendered through die-cuts, embossing, cutouts, and a single gatefold. A beautifully considered work. Riccardo Bozzi was born in Milan in 1966. He is a journalist for the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. He lives in Milan. Violeta Lopiz is an illustrator from the Spanish island of Ibiza. Her beautifully textured work is filled with personality and playfulness. Valerio Vidali is an Italian illustrator based in Berlin. Vidali enjoys botanical gardens and spends his spare time building kites that rarely fly.

★ A New York Times Best Children’s Book of 2021 ★★ Selected for the Rise: A Feminist Book Project for Ages 0-18 Booklist ★“In this gloriously unruly feminist fable, The True Story of a Mouse Who Never Asked for It explores the power of art-making, the tedium of the domestic, and the dangers of heteronormativity, all within beautiful pictures and tender words. I was enchanted by the pairing of graphic illustration and tight prose on every page. It is luminous and evocative from start to finish.” —Alisson Woods, author of Being LolitaFolklorist Ana Cristina Herreros and visionary illustrator Violeta Lópiz spin a deeply feminist retelling of an old Spanish folktale in The True Story of a Mouse Who Never Asked for It. Through rhythmic text, highly conceptual illustrations, and a final visual narrative that is silent but revelatory, this YA picture book builds from deceptive simplicity to an explosive end.The story begins with a mouse, very neat and hard-working, who makes herself a home. In disbelief that she has a house but isn’t a wife, suitors show up uninvited, each asking for her hand. She turns everyone down… until a pack of tiny kittens arrive, and she agrees to marry the smallest and most defenseless of the bunch. But it does every mouse well to remember that a kitten always grows up to be a cat.Today, the most commonly told version of this popular folktale serves as a warning, scaring girls to choose good men to marry by reminding them that the cat will always devour the mouse. But this story is rooted in the non-normative, non-performative original version, before it became a cautionary tale.Here, by contrast, the story tells of the pain and harm that come from falling prey to situations beyond one’s control. It is also a powerful story of reclaiming one’s selfhood.

Does every country have a Tooth Fairy? Well, in Spain and other Spanish- speaking countries, it happens to be a Tooth Mouse, and this is his story!★ A Kirkus Reviews Best Picture Book of 2023 ★ A 2024 USBBY Outstanding International Book ★Long ago, throughout the Spanish-speaking world, the Tooth Mouse brought children their permanent teeth, strong and straight as a mouse’s. Tracing the Tooth Mouse’s beginnings through to his descendants, this book artfully weaves the Tooth Mouse’s changing habits as the world industrializes, with the growing independence of the child, as teeth fall out and the child learns to care for themselves. It’s also a playful, thought-provoking history of our changing world—as even Tooth Mice and children must adapt their customs when faced with the culture-shifting forces of urbanization, migration, and capitalism...Just remember, magic can always be recovered, and the real gift in losing baby teeth is growing up!