Jim's Jazzy Creatures

With today's post I want to celebrate the recent Italian edition of Jim Flora's 

The Day The Cow Sneezed. To my knowledge, this is the first time that a book 

by Flora has been published in my country, and as they say, better late than never!

My gratitude goes to the wonderful publisher Orecchio Acerbo for bringing us 

another classic, after their beautiful re-editions of Peter Newell.

Like many, I discovered Flora through his famous jazz record covers before realizing 

that he had written and illustrated 17 children's books between 1955 and 1982.

The Day the Cow Sneezed was published in 1957, and was the second of the series.

Here's a peek at many of the other volumes, with links to more illustrations and info when available. 

And if you are not familiar with the artist, you may read his biography in Italian and English.

The Fabulous Fireworks Family, 1955

Charlie Yup and his Snip-Snap Boys, 1959

Leopold the See-Through Crumbpicker, 1961, thanks to Stickers and Stuff

Kangaroo for Christmas, 1962

My Friend Charlie, 1964

Grandpa's Farm, 1965

Sherwood Walks Home, 1966

Fishing with Dad, 1967

The Joking Man, 1968

Pishtosh Bullwash and Wimple, 1972

The Great Green Turkey Creek Monster, 1976

Grandpa's Ghost Stories, 1978

My thanks goes to the website and blog dedicated to Flora, and to the always delicious

Vintage Kid's Book My Kid Loves, which has uploaded most of the artist's books.

Sunday Safari - Supper's Ready

Tomi Ungerer

Kathleen Hale, Orlando (the Marmalade Cat) His silver Wedding, 1946 

Jim Flora

Yuri Vasnetsov

Art Seiden, Sonny the Lucky Bunny, 1952, thanks to try-whistling-this

 Delphine Durand, Big Rabbit’s Bad Mood, thanks to Stickers and Stuff

Tony Palladino, sketch for Anthony The Crocodile With A Glass Stomach

via the Milton Glaser Archives 

A. Georgievskaya illustration for Lesson of politeness by Samuil Marshak, 1978

thanks to Library things

Willy Schermele, Hondjes, thanks to janwillemsen

Eric Carle

 Daty Healy, Cat tales from many lands, 1932, via Curio Books

Paula Winter, The Bear and the Fly, thanks to fuck yeah,children's books!

Simone Rea

Performers, Acrobats & Clowns

The last act of this year's Circus festival is an episode from the very charming and funny

2003 tv series Creature Comforts created by Nick Parks at Aardman Animations.

The original concept utilizes bits of interviews with members of the public,

whose voices are then used to animate a long series of animal characters. 

Especially interesting to those of you who can understand English, 

since the best thing about these shorts is the humorous matching 

between the words spoken and the situations portrayed.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Last night Seba and I watched this awe-inspiring documentary by the great German director Werner Herzog.

He was allowed to film in the normally inaccessible Chauvet Cave, home to an extraordinary bestiary

 of hundreds of animal wall paintings created around 35,000 years ago. These beautiful and stunning

artworks are the oldest visual representations known to have been created by man.

What an astonishing journey into the mysterious world of our collective ancestors!

Talkative Beasts

Two mots-images by Jean Alessandrini, thanks to design et typo

Combining animals with letters is an old idea, but still as fun as always,

and open to endless variations. Today's selection includes both 

hand-lettered and typographic creatures, and even three-dimensional ones.

Ancient Chinese figure-inscription of an Ox designed to discourage people from eating meat

 and The Bear by Johann Leonhard Frisch, c.1700, thanks to Retro Graphic Design +

Ernst Keller, 1949

 Tom Carnase via the Graphic Design Archive Online

U&lc vol 1

Lisl Weil, Owl and other scrambles, 1980, thanks to Curio Books

Fefe Talavera

Jeremy Pettis, from 26 types of animals

Ivan Alexandrov

Sergio Carnevali

Roberto de Vicq de Cumptic, Bembo's Zoo

Isidro Ferrer

Michael Johnson at Almost extinct, thanks to Junkculture

Sarah King, Night Trout

Visit this previous post to see some examples 

of zoomorphic calligraphy in the Islamic tradition.

Russian Riddles

I photographed this lovely folk style book in the Russian booth at the Bologna Book Fair 

last April, but didn't feel like posting it because I didn't have any info about it.

Finally, thanks to a cyrillic decoder and Google Translator, the mystery is solved!

Titled White hare, where have you run? (thanks to quete and reset for the correct

 translation) and illustrated by Karinna Germanovna Pretro, it's a compilation

of traditional songs, nursery rhymes, riddles, tongue twisters and lullabies.

(Now, if only I could find a bit of information about the illustrator...) 

Update: this info is now available in the comments to this post.

Many thanks to Maria, quete and Irina for the data and links!