Animal Book for 2-5 Year Olds: Concept, Design, and Production

Animal book for children aged 2-5
“Pancho Panda Esploramondo: vola in Africa”

https://youtu.be/BwQFJ2AckgY

The idea for this book came to me while attending a course organized by the ‘Scioglilibro Association’ and led by Angela Catrani and Teresa Porcella, aimed at exploring books for very young children aged 0-3.

The project to be completed during the course was to design a series of books for children in this age group featuring animal characters.

I did some research and noticed that books for very young children, in most cases, always show the usual animals: dog, cat, hen, pig… and for wild ones, giraffe, tiger, lion…

Also thinking about my passion for travel, I decided to propose a series (not strictly a collection) of books for children aged 2-5 that would allow them to become familiar with different animals around the world, showing mainly lesser-known animals (the dik-dik, the monitor lizard, the shoebill…) or those that rarely appear in books for children in this age group. The text is in rhyme; the child will thus also be able to familiarize themselves with less common sounds (the names of the animals and the final greeting in the language of the country featured in the book), thereby proposing a fun journey discovering the planet and biodiversity.

This animal book for children aged 2-5 is planned as a series of books featuring other travels by Pancho Panda to discover the animals of other countries: South America (which I am already working on), North America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania.

The idea, however, is also to convey that travel, exploration, and knowledge also allow us to make new friends, who may be different from us in culture and characteristics. For this reason, in the first illustration showing Pancho in his home in Asia, I included a small surprise: in Chinese, on a scroll hanging in the house, I drew the two Chinese ideograms that mean ‘to travel’ and ‘friends’.

Finally, in the last two pages, I included an illustration that also allows for a small game with the children, who can guess the names of the animals found in the pages by linking them to the photographs that Pancho, like a true explorer, took around the world with his camera.

Regarding the illustrations, I chose a painterly style and a warm color palette that evokes Africa.

I would like to thank the course instructors from the ‘Scioglilibro Association’, especially Angela Catrani, who then mentored me for the completion of the project.

I thank the publishing house Officina Milena for having faith in me and in this project, and for allowing me to finally see my project in bookstores.

So, what can I say… Welcome to the magical world of ‘Pancho Panda esploramondo’! 🙂

Every page is a window onto new worlds, ready to be discovered.

Buy the book and prepare to be captivated by Pancho’s fascinating stories.

An extraordinary adventure awaits you!