"... until the day the world gave up. It disappeared like that, from one moment to the next. To people's astonishment, there were no more plants, animals, oceans and continents..." Portuguese author and illustrator Catarina Sobral signs here a brilliant contemporary tale, surreal and disturbing, on the theme of sustainable development. The world is leaving us: and we humans have to find solutions! With a lot of (black?) humour, we are shown what the reactions of politicians, physicists, ecologists, cooks and the whole astonished population would be, up to the "best footballer in the world" who asks himself, for lack of people: "... I am the best footballer of what?" You might as well go to a shrink...!

Inspired freely by Saint-Exupéry, this story relates a meeting between man and animal. Antoine the aviator bursts into the wild world of the fox during an accident in the forest. Thanks to the man's patience and his respect for the animal, a bond is established. And even if, without meaning to, Antoine takes the fox in his flying machine to discover the world of men, there will be no problem. Why? Because there is trust. Because there is trust. In spite of the violent climate that hangs over life on the airfield (Antoine is a war pilot), the animal does not give up his dreams, and when his friend does not return from his last flight, he does not lose hope of finding him. Anna Forlati's illustrations bring to Luca Tortolini's text the harmony of line and colour to depict a world where all that is missing is the strength of the heart, that is to say courage and confidence, to make it a true paradise.

Among the children around her, Penelope stands out because she doesn't talk. She doesn't feel like it. She prefers to listen. She prefers silence. In this noisy (and sometimes hostile) world, where you have to be heard in order to exist, how do you find your place?

The title of this book reminds us, of course, of the space station of the same name that orbited the Earth for fifteen years, from 1986 to 2001. And the story told is indeed that of an astronaut sent on a mission in space. However, there is no mention of the scientific dimensions of the journey, nothing to glorify the advanced technologies concentrated in this orbiting research laboratory. Rather, it is the astronaut's humanity that is highlighted through his thoughts and emotions, especially when he notices that a plant has started to grow inside the station itself: no doubt a seed slipped in with him before departure, and now it has blossomed!

In this book built around the theme of the alphabet, on the left-hand pages, each letter is associated with the image of an object: A for Aubergine, B for Bottle, etc.

But then - and this is the originality of this book - on the right-hand page each object is re-enacted or diverted, sometimes by becoming part of another object (the Aubergine becomes the foliage of the Tree; the Skittle becomes the Beaver's Tail, etc.), sometimes by transforming itself into another object (the Ham becomes the Mare's head and the Iris flower a Musical Instrument, and so on).

According to these same procedures, page after page the Eggs become Obuses, the Kiwi becomes a Kepi, Bread can become Fish and again, Chestnuts, Swimsuits, or Hot Air Balloons. What makes the analogy between the different objects associated with each letter of the alphabet is not only the same initial letter but rather the same shape.

How do you make young readers aware of important issues in today's world without making speeches or developing explanations? This is the challenge that this children's book takes up magnificently thanks to a lively, simple and effective graphic design and scenario. This album has been selected for the 2015-2016 Châtenay-Malabry schools' literary prize.

In his village in England, one day of a big jumble sale, Mr. Wilson decides to sell something quite particular: while his neighbours display in front of their door, along the street, all sorts of used objects they are trying to get rid of, he displays on his table, old souvenirs he has extracted from his head by pulling them out of his ear... And it works!

Behind our first names, there are often the saints of the calendar. Do we still know that they all have a particular attribute that allows us to identify them? Without trying to remain faithful to their history or their legend, the author has chosen some of these saints and has had fun freely associating their traditional attributes with children of today bearing these names.

This book can be seen at first as a series of portraits of familiar animals: from page to page, we see a deer, a donkey, a rabbit, a bear, etc., looking "at the camera". These animals seem all the more familiar to us because the images show them with features that "tame" them, making them relatively close to humans - without, however, ever crossing the line from which they could appear as "characters".

The verticality of the book's format announces both the setting and the central theme of the story it tells: the height of the facades and the depth of the streets deepen the gulf that separates people in the urban world. In such a context, only the wings of the soul and the imagination can ward off solitude. From one window to the other, in a confrontation accentuated by the emptiness of the street, a girl and a boy exchange their thoughts and desires through the flight of sparrows that come and go from one building to the other. Their common space is thus an imaginary kingdom that tries to build itself over the obstacles of reality. Their glances recompose a harmony of colours that the greyness of the city cannot destroy.

The images and text of this book adopt the point of view of a child to gather what is said about the moon: sayings, proverbs, quotes, popular beliefs. They thus allow the reader to share with him all that the mind can construct as fantasies from what it picks up around it and which constitutes a certain "knowledge". Hence the title: I was told that the moon...In fact, it is the precious work of the imagination that is deployed here. A work that is done through language, which tends both to fix meanings (those that it is important to share with one's fellow human beings) and to renew others (those that have fallen into clichés, received or outdated ideas).

A child who imagines himself to be old, very old, so that he can finally do whatever he wants, defy all prohibitions, experience the feeling of impunity enjoyed by old men, protected by their venerable age, their position of authority - or so he thinks... Yes, rejoice in being old to experience absolute freedom: this inner monologue, which Olivier Ka places from the perspective of a boy impatient to crunch the world, expresses with jubilant audacity the urgency of making a place for oneself, of sweeping aside the obstacles (especially those represented by "the others") that one sees springing up from all sides when one is the little man. The expressiveness and precision of the ballpoint pen in Carole Chaix's drawings accentuate the strength with which the child projects himself into situations that are as real to him as the surrounding world.

Autumn is coming to an end and most of the animals in the forest are preparing to hibernate. The badger, however, wants nothing to do with it: he has plans to have fun all winter long... but when he goes to find his friends to take them out, he finds them all asleep. Forced to look elsewhere, he meets new friends, with whom to spend the winter... until spring, when his old friends, freshly awakened, will look for him in turn...

Balthazar, Vladimochka, Ronald, Pearline, Najuat, Mitsuko and Ryad live in the four corners of the world, "on opposite sides" of the world. They do not know each other. Yet the reader, through the images and text that present their portraits, discovers their existence, their faces, their character, and sees how different, even opposed, they are in their tastes, their interests, their sensibilities. From there, he can imagine all the encounters, all the possible adventures.

The daily life of a building is animated by the presence of a cat attentive to the presence of the inhabitants: passing by the steepest paths, she visits each one, and especially a child, on the top floor, with whom she shares long moments of play before returning to her master.

The division of time is a human invention. Elusive and elusive, time seems to become a "real object" when it becomes seconds, minutes, months, years. Presented in the form of a character, as in this case the month of October, time suddenly appears to us in the familiar guise of our fellow human beings and of ourselves: it is therefore made of the same material as we are! It has its life, its activities, its habits, its tastes. And above all, it arranges the world according to seasonal rhythms and the higher laws of nature. The reader of this album discovers through the personification of time that it is not only a "dimension" in which life unfolds from one end to the other, as in a play, but that it belongs to us, that it is a component of our being in the same way as the cells of our body. Shown in action among us and in our image, October is our brother (it could also be January or July), and like him we are time. This is better, much better than having the illusion of mastering time.

"That's how it started. One night his father came home all happy. He announced that he had found a job in town, a good job. Benjamin didn't understand right away." (...) This album is about a child who goes from life in the country to life in the city. Benjamin must suddenly leave everything behind: his friends, his neighbours, his cherry tree in the garden. He has to move (but how can he fit everything into a box?), as well as the new way of living in the city, which is all to be discovered from his new window: The big square, the urban landscape, the swarming of the little humans living underneath... It's only after a good while, during which everything seems unacceptable, ugly and smelly, and thanks to a providential meeting that Benjamin finally decides to go out and start his "new life" as a city kid...