The Scar

Description

A little boy responds to his mother's death in a deeply moving story leavened by glimmers of humour and winning illustrations. When the boy in this story wakes up to find that his mother has died, he is overwhelmed with sadness, anger and fear that he will forget her. He shuts all the windows to keep in his mother's familiar smell and scratches open the cut on his knee to help him recall her comforting voice. He doesn't know how to speak to his dad any more, and when Grandma visits and throws open the windows, it's more than the boy can take - until she shows him another way to hold on to the feeling of his mum's love. With tenderness, touches of humour and unflinching emotional truth, Charlotte Moundlic captures the loneliness of grief through the eyes of a child, rendered with sympathy and charm in Olivier Tallec's expressive illustrations. It is a completely authentic look at a young boy's journey through grief. It features striking (and touching) illustrations in a restricted palette. It is a text that doesn't pull any punches, but still contains glimmers of humour and hope.

Author description

Charlotte Moundlic is the art director at French publishing imprint Pere Castor and the author of several French books for young readers. She lives in Paris. Olivier Tallec graduated from the Ecole Superieure d'Arts Graphiques in Paris and worked in advertising as a graphic designer before devoting himself to illustration. He has done many illustrations for newspapers and magazines and has illustrated more than thirty books for children. He lives in Paris. www.oliviertallec.fr