(Querido Kind, 1985, 88 pagina's)

In Deesje by Joke van Leeuwen you roll along with the main character from one adventure into the next. And not only as far as the story is concerned; reading the words and looking at the pictures is one big surprise. In the work of the doubly talented Van Leeuwen, text and illustrations complement each other perfectly, and humour and seriousness intermingle. The language is packed with puns and the comical black-and-white drawings are really different and also tell a story. A veritable feast for the eyes.

(Querido Kind, 1996, 149 pagina's)

One characteristic of classics is that they tell us the most ordinary things in extraordinary ways. Alice’s constant growing and shrinking, for example, teaches her that nothing is what it seems to be. And Pinocchio’s nose shows him that lying doesn’t pay. Iep! is based on a similar principle. Like Deesje and Bobbel, main characters in Van Leeuwen’s previous books, Eep is pervaded by an enormous longing for freedom, a demand for space for people as they are. Eep is a creature with little wings and little limbs that closely resemble legs. Little legs with little toes and ‘little nails on those toes and tiny little crumbles of earth under those nails on those toes on those legs.’…

(Querido Kind, 1999, 156 pagina's)

When reading Bezoekjaren (Visiting Years, 1999), you realize just how important the rule of law is. Zima grows up in a large family in Casablanca during the dictatorial reign of King Hassan II. One day, her eldest brother, Amrar, does not come home. He has spoken out against the authorities and is being detained without a fair trial.

(Querido Kind, 2003, 80 pagina's)

Kweenie (Dunno) is the name of a strange little creature with a big, yellow, beak-like nose who suddenly tumbles onto the bed of the first-person narrator, a small girl with a mop of hair. Kweenie doesn’t know who he is or where he comes from. All he knows is that he’s fallen out of a story that had just started and that he fears will now continue without him. When the little girl sees how sad he is she decides to help him find his story.

(Querido Kind, 2008, 125 pagina's)

As modern media consumers, we receive around four thousand images projected onto our retinas every day. Four thousand! That’s an incredible number. But there’s no way of stopping them. The digitisation of the 21st century is an irreversible process and the visual culture is now more dominant than ever. The highly regarded and very versatile author/illustrator Joke van Leeuwen has written a beautifully designed book on this very subject.

(Querido Kind, 2010, 104 pagina's)

Toen mijn vader een struik werd (When My Dad Turned Into a Bush) is a title that could only have been dreamed up by such a highly original and creative mind as Joke van Leeuwen’s. It sounds like a good, fun read, gently poetic and absurd and it immediately makes us want to find out what lies behind the words.

(Querido Kind, 2011, 16 pagina's)

‘What are you doing in my bed?’ These words echo like a mantra through the pages of Joke van Leeuwen’s picture book for toddlers. Although technically speaking, ‘pages’ isn’t quite the right word. Waarom lig jij in mijn bedje? is constructed as a ‘leporello’, a concertina book that can be folded out to make a strip that’s a couple of metres long.

(Querido, 2016, 48 pagina's)

In Joke van Leeuwen’s most recent picture book, Somewhere, she demonstrates once again that high-quality literature need not be inaccessible. This philosophical graphic novel is about a mountaineer who falls into another world, where everything is put into question.

(Querido, 2022, 251 pagina's)

This book presents 24 portraits of non-conformist individuals, with Joke van Leeuwen focusing on their youth. Their achievements as adults appear only in separate text boxes. The author chose her characters from all over the world, throughout history and from a variety of disciplines. There are artists and directors (Frida Kahlo, Ingmar Bergman), sports heroes (Pelé) and champions of freedom, equality and children’s rights (Sojourner Truth, Anton de Kom, Janusz Korczak).