I know you should never judge a book by its cover or a film by its poster, but check this contrast (speaking of forests.): I found much more inviting the cover of the English translation of the book, published last year as ' The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly' by Penguin Books (note that penguins can't fly either, but this one knows how to make books fly off shelves - particularly when the said book has already done it in several languages before). The film quickly became a hit, but I really didn't like its Marketing 101 / 'what kids want' downer of a trailer.

When the animation movie ' Leafie, a hen into the wild' was released, three years ago, I learned that it was an adaptation from a very popular children's book boosted by a star-laden ro(o)ster (e.g. I did enjoy Disney movies, but like you enjoy an industrial ice cream: yes that's what I wanted, but was it what I needed? I didn't necessarily enjoy these movies, but I enjoyed that upsetting feeling, these unanswered questions, and I appreciated much more the artist's effort, as well as their respect for their young audience. Much later, I realized that the animation movies that had left the strongest impression on me were all clay animations, and that their imperfections served as asperities for the viewer's imagination to take hold and to claim if not control, at least some room for manoeuvre. For the first time, I realized the sheer power of illustration as a catalyst for imagination.

Compared to that simple illustration, all others in the book felt dull, overly explicit, an insult to the story and its readers. To me, this forest looked at the same time tiny and infinite, beautiful and scary, harmless and lethal, open to all possibilities and claustrophobically hermetic.

It simply depicted a small grove's canopy from above, almost as a cute and round bouquet, and I wondered what marvels and threats could hide behind these innocent leaves. We all keep very strong images from a few cherished books and animation movies of our childhood, and the most powerful ones are often the worlds we built in our heads as readers, sometimes fueled by a gem seeded by some talented illustrator along our paths.įor instance, I remember very well an apparently very simple illustration of a forest at the bottom of a page from a tale - I forgot which story, but that was very early in the narrative.

The hen who thought she could fly