A contemporary fairy tale from a Tunisian writer and a Belgian artist

Tunisian Writer and Belgian Illustrator

Laila Koubaa, illustrated by Mattias De Leeuw

Azizi and the Little Blue Bird

Book Island 2015 $17.99hb 28pp

ISBN 978 0 9941 0986 6

Themes: Fear/ Greed/ Justice
Azizi lives in the Land of the Crescent Moon, a place ruled by two despotic leaders who keep order by fear and theft and have a particularly nasty habit of locking up all the country’s beautiful and innocent blue birds. But change is coming and with the help of one farsighted bluebird Azizi is able to bring freedom back to the land. Read into it what you will but it is also a great story just to read aloud without looking for hidden meanings. What makes it outstanding are the illustrations. These have been created by a young (26 years old) Belgian artist whose work has been likened to that of Quentin Blake. The images are clean and white but with a feeling of great dry heat – and you can almost smell the jasmine as you turn the pages. Like nearly all books from this publisher, this is a special example of high quality book production.

Year 2 up/ Age 6 up