Simon's vegetable garden

Simon, the rabbit, planted many carrots but somebody suggested him to put also letucces, another one advised him to plant tomatoes, and also eggplants... so the vegetable garden grew and filled not only with vegetables but also with some special farmers: the mouse, the hen, the goat, the little pig, the fox... The 10th International Compostela Prize for Picture Books is a compliment about the collective work, the coexistence in harmony and in contact with nature. Rocío Alejandro’s first book as author and illustrator is inspired by the community garden in her neighborhood. It emphasizes the narrative progression of the text, that begins counting the necessary steps to create an orchard. With an accumulative structure, the characters are successively introduced into the story.

The illustrations, in orange and ocher tones in coherence with the scene where this tale takes place, are elaborated with the technique of stamping using inked stamps: it’s a very laborious process because each part of every character and object represented is printed individually with its corresponding stamps.

Due to the universal nature of this proposal, its clear ecological intention and the different levels of reading that it provides, "Simon’s vegetable garden" is a book with several interpretations despite of its apparent simplicity.