Pieter van den Heuvel
Animals on the Move
Animals on the Move is four metres long. The pictures can be looked at individually but they open up to reveal a long procession of animals on their way to a new house with all their belongings. For this debut, Pieter van den Heuvel has chosen a concertina form, and the result is a picture book that is both spectacular and original.
The animals take a leisurely stroll from a countryside setting to an urban area. The threat of the monstrous foot in the drily comical conclusion places a nice exclamation mark at the end of the story.
There’s something amusing about each of the animals, drawn in dark pencil coloured with watercolour. A giraffe in spotty boots is carrying a cat in its mouth. A moose has a piano on its back – and a sloth has fallen asleep on top of the piano. The rhyming sentences swirl across the pages. This spectacle is a delight for the eyes.
