Claude Ponti: The Pontiff of Children’s Literature and His Phenomenal Impact on Kids’ Books

He is the pontiff of children’s literature, the person responsible for the deluge of chicks who proliferate and happily heckle in the shelves of bookstores since he broke into them in 1985. His first work appeared that year, Adèle’s album, was only to be read by his daughter, to whom he offered it to celebrate her birth. That was without counting Geneviève Brisac, his editor, who convinced him to make it accessible to all children, before taking him with her to the Ecole des Loisirs where he has written nearly 80 albums since. A cursed painter in his first life, then a press illustrator at L’Express, Claude Ponti says he found his speech again – until then confiscated by the heartbreaks and dramas of his childhood – thanks to children’s books. It is there, in this unique playground, that he invented an incredible language that only he masters, but that all children understand. At the crossroads of Lewis Caroll, Oulipo and Hieronymus Bosch, the world that he unfolds from book to book is a joyous mess, inhabited by marvelous chimeras, such as Pétronille, Hipollène, Okilélé, Poutchy Bloue, Lili Prune and others Oum-Popotte. Some have the right to their own series: this is the case of the chicks Tromboline and Foulbazar, the funny mice Monsieur monsieur and Mademoiselle Moiselle, but especially Blaise, the masked chick, who definitely doesn’t look his age.

Arrived in 1991 in Blaise and the stormy mouthfulthis eternal irreverent has reappeared on multiple occasions and returns today in At ease Blaise!, a collection which is entirely devoted to him. You can also find this funny animal until the end of June at the Jardin d’Acclimatation for an exhibition of around fifty panels under the title “Blaise takes his ease…at the Jardin d’Acclimatation”. Opportunities, among others, to return to the extraordinary career of Claude Ponti and to enter into the making of his… gigagrant work.

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More information on its news:

• Collection At ease, Blaise! was published on March 27 by The Leisure School.
  Publisher’s presentation: Blaise the masked chick is exceptional: he can do all kinds of stupid things without fear of being argued with, since all he has to do is take off his mask and we don’t know who he is. Practical, right? He can thus be king of sports, poet, trainer of monsters, accomplish feats unique in the world, and even criticize Claude Ponti (who cannot help but include him in all his books)!
• Fifty panels highlighting Claude Ponti and Blaise, his emblematic character, can be discovered in the exhibition ” Blaise makes himself comfortable…at the Jardin d’Acclimatation”, in Paris, from March 16 to June 30.

• The meeting between Claude Ponti and the singer Pomme“Ponti, Apple and the Chicks“, hosted by critic Sophie Van der Linden, will take place at Paris Book Festival April 12 at 3 p.m.

• Claude Ponti is the godfather of the new edition of the festival ” Leave in Book” from June 19 to July 21, 2024, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the CNL. He also signed the festival poster.

To listen: Freedom according to Blaise Cendrars

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Sound of the Day: “Preciosa” by Empress Of

Bilingual music has a bright future ahead of it. Empress Of in living proof. Lorely Rodriguez, her real name, was born in the United States to Honduran parents and a salsa pianist father. However, she did not immediately take advantage of this dual culture. When she started in 2012, she favored singing in English against a backdrop of synthpop. His first album Me published in 2015 quickly delighted the elitist readership of Pitchfork magazine, a benchmark for criticism of independent music in the United States. Except that in the meantime, Rosalia and Kali Uchis have helped to move the boundaries of international pop music that is still very much embedded in a monolith of English speaking. On his new album For Your Consideration, Empress Of alternates between the two languages ​​and continues to distance itself from its initial audience. A true break-up album, focusing on happy celibacy rather than heartbreak, For Your Consideration allows its interpreter to emancipate himself in the direction of a retro-Hollywood glamorous imagination. In this game of heightened romanticism, the song “Preciosa” has everything of a manifesto. This is our sound of the day.

2024-04-11 16:13:09
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