Description
About the book:
“This is a TRUE story.
It’s about my world”
There’s smoke in the kitchen.
Dad acts normal but Mom is worried her head might explode.
Even so, the biggest problem is global.
You-Know-Who has been at it again and the world must be put right.
Today!
Yes, Big brothers are mean. Big brothers spell trouble. And Big Brothers are not to be trusted, especially if they turn your world upside down. Or is it downside up?
In this book where the parallel crazy worlds with their upside-downness and downside-upness weave a fantastic, troubled, creased co-existence, both exasperating and reassuring. Nothing is what it seems like and everything is up for wonder. Read it as a quirky story of squabbling siblings or of something more global, more sinister; each page leaves us peeling multiple layers, especially in a world turned upside down by the pandemic, where the family has come out to be the focal point of our home-bound existence, frustrating for some, reassuring for the others, or both for most.
Ken Spillman adroitly plays around with words and situations both believable and unbelievable, while Silvana Giraldo spins a splendidly broken-but-beautiful world to bring alive a somewhat Orwellian dystopia into this picture book.
The various themes and sub-themes that the title touches upon:
Sibling bonding, sibling conflicts; everyday heroism, families, dysfunctional family, everyday chaos, loving family, Orwellian Big Brother, everyday life, global problems, peace.
About the Creators:
With more than 80 books to his name, Ken Spillman is one of Australia’s most prolific and versatile authors, editors and critics. He has tackled both fiction and non-fiction, winning and being shortlisted for numerous prizes. Ken’s writing for children has appeared on four continents in many different languages. He has entertained more than 90,000 children with his lively presentations on the magic of books, the gift of imagination and the countless benefits of creative thinking. Ken is also a highly popular speaker at international festivals and conferences. Visit www.kenspillman.com
Silvana Giraldo is an illustrator and a visual artist from the National University of Colombia. She has worked also in art design for theatre plays, focused mostly on costume, props and stage design. Through illustration, she has found a warm and enjoyable scenery to develop and give shape to her work and own language. This language has led her to participate in projects centered on cultural and environmental contents dissemination. Her personal work has been influenced by the dialog between humans and their landscape -their natural surroundings- and by the drifts of this dialog towards narrations and stories about topics as memory, cultures and imaginaries. For that reason, ethnography and natural history are some of her biggest inspirations and favorite territories where she enjoys delving and exploring. This sometimes gets her into research and an understanding process of her own history and memories. Her artwork flows through the constant experimentation with techniques that assist her in the discovery and exploration of a content or an idea, such as drawing, painting, collage, art installations or illustrated projects. These all with an increasing emphasis and interest in blending the ideas of object and space with the two-dimensional plane.
