Chandra and Deena’s family has a smoky oil lamp at home, which makes their baby brother cough. Then one day at the market, the sisters spot a man selling lamps that are powered by the sun instead of kerosene — and would be healthier for their brother! But how will they afford to buy one of the “magic” lamps? This lyrical celebration of hard work, determination and sisterhood is brought to life with luminous acrylic illustrations of the mountains and markets of Nepal. Includes 7 pages of facts about Nepal and instructions for making a solar-powered oven (Source).
Author(s): Theresa Heine & Judith Gueyfier
Theresa Heine was born in Surrey, England. As a primary school teacher they have lived and worked in London, Singapore and Berlin. They now live in a village in Northern Germany, not far from the Baltic coast. They have a German husband, three children and three grandchildren. Theresa has led music workshops and read their books in schools and libraries in England and in Germany (Source).
Judith Gueyfier has always drawn, ever since they were little. During their studies in art schools, they started to travel, in Morocco, in Burkina Faso. After a baccalaureate in applied arts in Brest, a BTS in Visual Communication at the Duperré school in Paris, and three years at the School of Decorative Arts in Strasbourg in Illustration, they started working in the press and then youth publishing in October 2004. Their graphic universe has developed around travels, nourished by African and North African literature. These experiences have strongly marked their career in children’s publishing and in the choice of texts that they illustrate. This is perhaps why they paint stories that look elsewhere, people who dream of elsewhere. They like to mix the real and the imaginary. Each album is the object of a choice, of a crush on a text, for a project, then of a graphic research, of a journey, to find the color of the text and how to express its emotion. Looking at others, awareness of the world as it is today, human values, are important criteria in Judith’s choice of work paths. They started by creating illustrations for the magazine Astrapi, and since then have illustrated around fifty albums for various publishers such as Rue du Monde, Didier Jeunesse, Le Seuil, Sarbacane, Milan, L’Elan Vert, Belin, Nathan… At the same time, they regularly intervene in nurseries, nursery and primary schools, colleges and high schools, for meetings and workshops around their books, in France and abroad. In November 2016, Gueyfier founded the association Encrages with friends from various backgrounds, mobilizing to welcome refugees, through writing and illustration (encrages.org). The activities of Encras ended in 2022 (Source).
