Project Description
Picture Book “Ma che brutta giornata!”
Reviews
What is a book if not a magical portal?
Our only chance to live countless lives on this planet, to be ourselves and all the characters we love.
The most beautiful tribute to reading comes from Rimini-based illustrator Barbara Marini in her new children’s picture book.
🔖 Barbara Marini’s book sits halfway between a #silentbook and a #picturebook 🖌️
🔖 The skillful use of color conveys the protagonist’s emotions, allowing us readers to feel his state of mind. 🎨🖌️ We experience with him the transition from monotony to the wonder of the power of reading! 📖✨
🎁 A book to gift to those who love reading and to those who are yet to discover the beauty a book can bring into people’s lives — especially children! 👫🧑🤝🧑👬
🧚🏻♀️ It is now well established that boredom allows our minds to reflect, activate creative thinking, and stimulate imagination.
📗 In this delicate yet powerful picture book, we witness exactly that. Barbara Marini beautifully depicts the process that occurs when, after just a few minutes of boredom, the child protagonist of this story brings a fantastic world to life. Naturally, he finds an object that aids this positive escape from reality: a book.
🎨 The illustrations transport readers of all ages into fun adventures, fully immersed in nature.
🔖 Ma che brutta giornata! is a little gem that draws attention to the power of books and the countless worlds they can open. The illustrated pages are initially colorless, precisely to intensify the feeling of boredom and the absence of imagination.
“A story that celebrates the power of reading, imagination, and sharing these experiences with others.
Even when you’re stuck at home on a rainy day, you can live surprising adventures!
And you, which book would you like to dive into?”
Ever since I was little, books have been “boxes to hide in when it rains outside” (quote from Pinguini Tattici Nucleari).
And they still are for me. That’s why I wanted to put a little bit of myself into these pages and show how reading can spark imagination and transport you to fantastic places — especially when, or I’d say, precisely when “it’s raining outside.”
The first illustrations for this picture book — the ones that started the whole project, created while we were all confined at home during the pandemic — can be seen here.
A little curiosity: the illustrated room in the book is actually the bedroom of one of my children. Even as a child, he used to tell me: “Mom, when I read a book, it feels like I’m moving into another world.” That idea became the inspiration for the book. My son was my muse 🙂
From those first illustrations, modified, changed, and rethought, after a lot of work, this book was born. It will be released on February 7, 2025, published by Edizioni Il Ciliegio, whom I sincerely thank for believing in the project from the start and for the professionalism in producing it.
July 2025 Update
The book’s illustrations were selected among the 12 finalist illustrators of the “Un prato di Fiabe 2025” contest: https://www.associazionemarginalia.org/un-prato-di-fiabe-2025/
📖 Reading Preview
If you want to listen to the reading of the first pages of the picture book, watch the video on my Youtube channel:
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🔎 Behind the Scenes: Behind the Pages of a Picture Book
If you want to see how I created the background of one of the book’s illustrations using watercolor, check out the video on my Youtube channel:
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If you want to see more children’s books I’ve worked on: CHILDREN’S BOOKS – PORTFOLIO
If you like this project, also check the Children’s Illustration section of my portfolio.
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