Flooded: Winner of the Klaus Flugge Prize for Illustration 2023

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Not only is Mariajo Ilustrajo’s storytelling deft and attention grabbing, but the way she sequences the story, with huge landscape images against comic style intimate commentary, is assured.

This is a beautiful picture book filled with lots of wonderfully illustrated animals who have a little problem!Preoccupied by their own concerns, they deal with the practical inconveniences of rising water in humorous and inventive ways until finally they listen to the one voice urging action, and work together on a solution. The hippo leaving the taps open is a bit reminiscent of the early development when I was building the story and I was questioning why the city became flooded. They absolutely loved the artwork featuring gorgeous, blues and blacks as well as yellow shades for a very significant character within the book. However, when I was finishing Flooded for my publisher, my partner and I had just moved into the house we live in now, which we renovated whilst living there at the same time. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.

I have bought copies of the book to share with friends who are teachers as this is the kind of book my primary classes would have loved me to read to them. Flooded draws the readers’ attention to the increasing problems of climate change without being explicit. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. We use Google Analytics to see what pages are most visited, and where in the world visitors are visiting from.I was at my last school for 4 years and we had ********* book fairs every term – and every term, I was disappointed by the narrow range of books. It’d be lovely to hear of any little Easter Eggs (surprises) that readers can find in the picturebook? The development images for Flooded (her first published picture book as an author / illustrator) were the new talent overall winner at the World Illustration Awards 2020.

Flooded is the funny and beautifully illustrated tale of animals who live in a city that is ever so slowly flooding. This is an important story, cleverly told and beautifully drawn, say the judges, full of little details that allow children to explore its world, even if they can’t yet read the story. Does the book contain anything that teachers would wish to know about before recommending in class (strong language, sensitive topics etc.You have shared how Flooded was inspired by a summer project that resulted in a print of animals traversing London’s underground: a cast and a setting. This page is an allegory to the attitudes we have seen towards climate change over the years, and it only seems to becoming a more pressing issue as more and more people are adversely affected, through droughts, wildfires etc. Flooded shows a menagerie of animals waking up to see that their community has flood water making travel and usual activities difficult and nearly impossible for the smaller ones. I think those years have been like training for me as an illustrator and doing the Masters in Children’s Book Illustration helped me to push to a different level that is more personal than when I was completing briefs for others.

One of the comments you made in a video was about how the story began with a hippo leaving the taps on. You guys were so fab and Dawn was such a lovely presence in the schools - I will absolutely be in touch next time I'm in your neck of the woods. Can you tell us a little about some of the modules you took there and the lecturers who had an impact on your work?It was selected by the Unpublished Children's Books Showcase, as the third most voted project, with 29 votes from the jury. It was the second module on the course and it’s when I started to think about sequences and how a few images could tell a story. Working with an editor and art director can really help to push the story to its best, by asking simple questions like, “What’s the story about” or “What’s the point?