{"id":4583,"date":"2018-03-14T00:01:56","date_gmt":"2018-03-14T06:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=4583"},"modified":"2018-03-14T07:27:20","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T13:27:20","slug":"me-and-my-fear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=4583","title":{"rendered":"Francesca Sanna’s Me and My Fear<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\nHere’s a treat for any 7-Imp readers who, like me, read and enjoyed Italian illustrator and graphic designer Francesca Sanna’s<\/a><\/strong> award-winning The Journey<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, released in 2016. If you didn’t read this striking story of a refugee family, Sanna’s picture book debut, you can read more about it here<\/a><\/strong> in a post I wrote at Kirkus<\/em> that year. (And I posted art from it here<\/a><\/strong>.) <\/p>\n

Sanna will be back this year with a follow-up story about a young girl experiencing life in a new country. She’s an immigrant in a new city with a new neighborhood to explore and a new school to attend, struggling to acclimate. The book, Me and My Fear<\/em> (Flying Eye Books), will be on shelves this September. (I was fortunate to read an early copy.) Evidently, Francesca received a grant to work with the Centre for the Study of Internationalism (the Reluctant Internationalists project at Birkbeck, University of London) and spent a year in classrooms with immigrant children. The result of that is this new picture book, which is a raw, tender story about fear, something to which all children certainly can relate, immigrants or not. To be sure, though, this is specifically about the immigrant experience — when the teacher can’t pronounce your name and when you can’t understand others (even that one kid, who kindly tries to befriend you). Even worse, no one can understand you<\/em>.
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\nSanna literally personifies fear in this story, capturing the girl’s interior life in the form of a blob-like creature who walks with her. As you can see on the cover (above) and the few spreads here today, she paints Fear as a small, pale creature, who grows as the girl’s trepidation grows. “I have always had a secret,” Sanna writes. “A tiny friend called Fear.” The girl attempts to adjust to life with the ever-evolving creature, trying to manage her loneliness and frustration as well. The ending is a hopeful one \u2014 and a reminder that we’re all in this together \u2014 but I won’t spoil it. <\/p>\n

Here a few more spreads, showcasing Sanna’s captivating and stylized illustrations. …
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“I have always had a secret. A tiny friend called Fear.”<\/em>
(Click to enlarge spread)<\/center>
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(Click either image to enlarge and see spread in its entirety)<\/em><\/center>
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“But since we came to this new country, Fear isn’t so little anymore.
She keeps growing and growing.”<\/em>
(Click to enlarge spread)<\/center>
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“At break time, Fear keeps me all to herself.”<\/em>
(Click to enlarge spread)<\/center>
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* * * * * * *<\/center><\/p>\n

ME AND MY FEAR. Text and illustrations \u00a9 Francesca Sanna 2018. Illustrations reproduced by permission of the publisher, Flying Eye Books, London.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Here’s a treat for any 7-Imp readers who, like me, read and enjoyed Italian illustrator and graphic designer Francesca Sanna’s award-winning The Journey, released in 2016. If you didn’t read this striking story of a refugee family, Sanna’s picture book debut, you can read more about it here in a post I wrote at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-picture-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4583\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}