Kilaka, John
Der wunderbare Baum
A picture book from Tanzania
Translated from English by Barbara Brennwald
© 2009 Baobab Books; 4th edition 2017
Original edition
36 pages, hardcover, 28,5 x 21,8 cm
CHF 25.00 / € [D] 18,50 / € [A] 19,10
ISBN 978-3-905804-30-0
Ages 4 and up
The land is dry, the juicy fruits on the tree are too high up for the animals to reach. Even strong elephant and tall giraffe cannot help. Then bunny has an idea: maybe wise turtoise could help. Good idea. But stop – this task is for the big ones. Old elephant, tall giraffe and strong lion, however, come back empty-handed each time … The famous Tingagtinga artist John Kilaka has retold and illustrated this traditional African story.
Foreign rights sold:
Arabic, Danish, French, Japanese, Swedish
→ Foreign Rights Catalogue
The Author and Illustrator
John Kilaka was born in the southwest of Tanzania in 1966. As a child he loved to draw on the blackbord a school; which angered the teacher for two reasons – he was distracting his classmates and using up the school’s precious supply of chalk.At the age of twenty he moved to Dar es Salaam where he studied the art of Tingatinga painting with Peter Martin. Today John Kilaka is now one of the most important representants of Tingatinga art. He has published three picture books with the Swiss Publisher Baobab Books, all of them have been translated into many languges. John has not only been collecting stories from Tanzania but travelled throughout Africa and Europe and participated in many story telling programs.
Awards
→ Peter Pan Prize, IBBY Sweden
→ Shortlisted for Rattenfänger Literature Award
→ Beste 7, Deutschlandfunk
