The 2019 New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children’s Books, Featuring A Million Dots
November 8th, 2019 by jules
Did you see the announcement a week ago today of the 2019 New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children’s Books? I always look forward to this list. The 2019 books — as chosen by judges Bruce Handy, Jessica Cline, and Jillian Tamaki — are here.
Today, I’m featuring some spreads from one of those books — Sven Völker’s A Million Dots (Cicada, September 2019). The book opens with the one tree you see above, and by the time you are done reading it, you have counted to a million (over a million, actually). And that is because with each page turn, you are doubling the number you see. So, you go from 1 to 2 to 4 to 8 to 16 to 32 to …. You get the idea. All the way up to 1,048,576, which appears in a dramatic gatefold spread. All of this is laid out in Völker’s uncluttered and pleasing graphic style. Yes, a million dots are involved. “[H]ow quickly two (trees) begets 256 (freckles),” writes one of the NYT judges.
A MILLION DOTS. Concept, illustration and design by Sven Völker. First published 2019. Copyright © Cicada Books Limited. Illustrations reproduced by permission of the publisher.