Two picturebook fanatics spend eighty days in Europe, visiting over sixty cities on an odyssey to know more about children’s literature and meet its most celebrated artists in the cosmopolitan centers of the continent.
When most Asian readers think of European children’s literature, we focus on Hans Christian Andersen and the Dutch character of Miffy the rabbit. But the field in Europe is much, much wider than that, especially in the less-familiar nations of eastern Europe. With hearts full of hope, picturebook fanatics Su Yi-Chen and Hsieh Yi-Ling take off on an eighty-day tour of Europe’s illustration landscape, visiting over sixty cities in an attempt to see all they can see.
Their tour of thirteen countries takes them to Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, the Balkan states, and even further. As we the readers watch them read, buy books, and peruse bookstores, we are treated to stories about writing and illustrating across Europe’s dramatic political history as well as to short biographies of famous writers and illustrators. Each new place reveals its own literary wonders, local talent, and rich mythology represented on paper, offering the visitors far more than they could ever hope to take home in a single trip.
