Manuel Marsol (Madrid, 1984) draws for simple aesthetic and literary delight. To enjoy. To get lost in thoughts of him. To express. But his books never serve the reader for anything specific, at least consciously. And although his illustrations are always on the children's shelves of all bookstores, the truth is that his work attracts children and adults alike: they are books with many layers of reading and each reader finds their place.
With Yôkai, which he published with Carmen Chica, he won the prestigious International Illustration Prize at the Bologna Book Fair in 2017, but they are not the only awards that have been won by works as strongly symbolic as Mvsevm (2019), Tiempo del Gigante ( 2016), Duel in the Sun (2019) or Ahab and the White Whale (2014). Now, with Astro (Fulgencio Pimentel), his latest work, Marsol carries out a cathartic, introspective process, whose beginning and end span no less than 10 years. In this work, the creator speaks to us in a very particular way about the loss of a loved one, but also challenges the universe with some of the great questions that humanity has always asked: what we do here and why we exist.
Astro is an astronaut with a mission on a strange planet. Although in the eyes of the observer, an alien and narrator of the story, the stranger is that visitor dedicated body and soul to taking samples and making measurements. Alien and astronaut make contact and from then on they are inseparable: they play, they tell each other secrets... they are friends. Until the cycle of life comes into play, little Astro has to deal with the terrible event of the loss of his friend. “In this book there is a personal issue: I lost my father when I was 11 years old and I think there is an identification with the character and with the fact of trying to deal with the pain, while finding the good things about the trip,” he says. Manuel Marsol, whom we also sense as a child in these pages. “For me it was important that this book existed; take out what was inside, verbalize it through drawing,” he says. The result is a space trip to find a unique and safe planet where alien and astronaut, father and son, play and discover life together.
Astro would have been Marsol's first book “if I hadn't gotten stuck.” It has become the last, but between the illustrations from one period and another you can guess the evolution of that creator who abandoned the field of advertising to give free rein to his overflowing imagination with the album. “I was very burned out from doing advertisements, although I recognize that it was also naive on my part to think that there I could, let's say, develop artistically,” he explains. "Then I saw that in the field of the album there was a lot of avant-garde: in the plastic, in the aesthetic... There was a very surprising type of illustration and an impressive freedom."
Finding in Astro two crucial moments of the creator, separated by ten years, has its charm. For a few pages he travels through the novel, more experimental, fresh and “crazy”, as he himself admits, “trying to make some drawings that would surprise even myself.” On the other hand, the illustrator appears mature, balanced, with more mastery of the medium and greater narrative concision. It's also one of the few times we see Marsol flirting with collage. It is not a book as cinematic as the western Duel in the Sun, but it also reveals the film student that Manuel Marsol was in the approach of the scenes. “Making an album is almost like making a movie, a kind of production. You can control what happens, with much more modest means than in cinema, but with impressive control of the narrative and aesthetics,” he explains.
The passage of time, the landscape and now death are themes that cross Marsol's work and that invite reflection, although we know beforehand that there will be gaps or doubts that children will not know how to fill. “The other day they told me about some children who had been talking about the topic of death and what it means to disappear, after reading the book. I find it interesting that children ask themselves these types of questions and have these concerns, especially because they are going to have an interesting conversation with their parents or whoever has read the book. It is not necessary to understand everything,” reflects the Madrid illustrator.
Astro is undoubtedly the most intimate work with the most personal involvement of the author, but not the only one in which his parents intersect in their work. Mvsevm also has a lot to do with the visits he made to museums as a child with his parents, both art history teachers. The same Astro is also a dedication to the close friend of his father, the painter and sculptor López-Soldado, with whom he came to work for a few months in his studio. “Astro is a landscape from the past, an imaginary landscape of an imaginary planet, but at the same time it is a landscape from my childhood memory, in which I saw his paintings, most of them large format, with very sinuous shapes, in white and black. In a way it is as if I were now traveling through that universe again.”
Although the multiple recognitions place him as one of the most reputable and interesting illustrators on the Spanish scene, Manuel Marsol does not take anything for granted and continues working on works that come to light thanks to the commitment of small publishers such as Fulgencio Pimentel, which treasures most of the Madrid creator's titles.
A four-year process and many questions is what it has cost the authors of the Wonder Ponder publishing house to carry out this interesting and transgressive book that tries to demystify everything related to death through the questions of the little ones, who come freed from any type of taboo or prejudice. How does the skin go? When you die, does the thought go away? How do we know that a dead person is really dead? Before she was born, where was she? Was she dead? Is dying bad luck?...
These are just some questions that we try to answer with ease and humor, but from scientific and anthropological rigor. Even philosophical when necessary. Talking about death is also talking about life, and in this proposal, illustrated by the Italian Andrea Antimori, a lot circulates in the form of doubts that have been raised throughout a series of workshops led by people between 5 and 15 years old, in different countries around the world. “Of the hundreds of questions received from countries such as Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Turkey, Finland, Germany, the United Kingdom or France, we selected the 28 that represented the variety and depth of children's interest in death,” explain the authors. With This Is Death?, the publisher inaugurates the Wonder Ponder Lab collection, a project to offer collaborative books, the result of a research process and workshops similar to the one carried out now, and with the essential participation of the public of children and young people. .
The Emonautas publishing house has just released a couple of interesting books that address death from different angles. We especially opted for Eight Lives, a wordless story illustrated by Eva Delaserra that conveys in a very human way all the sorrow for the loss of a beloved animal. In this story it is a cat, and the dejected character is not a child, but an adult man, because adults also suffer, long, cry and dream. An endearing visual narrative about grieving for a pet, which is at the same time the beginning of a new story. Because the end of something can sometimes be the beginning of a new house. As is usual in this publishing house, the authors have also prepared some teaching resources to work on grief with children.
Another book without words signed by Francesc Bañeres and although we only find it in Catalan, it is worth keeping in mind because it is at the same time a tribute to all the grandparents who are part of raising their grandchildren. This particular book has two different parts: one starring the grandson and the grandfather, and all the wonderful things they do together. His story could well start on the last day of school, just before the start of summer vacation. This year it's time to spend them with grandpa, in the countryside, where in addition to taking care of the garden and feeding the chickens, you can do multiple activities, even jumping into the pool in gayumbos. In the second part of L'avi, the grandfather is no longer there. And although at first everything seems empty, good memories begin to flood everything. A book that shares with the previous one the ideality of images to express so much without a single word.
