Crocodile Profession

Profession? Crocodile!

More than a story without words, Crocodile Profession by Giovanna Zoboli and Mariachiara Di Giorgio is a story that leaves (positively and ironically) without words.

While browsing this silent book for the first time you hear the noise of the head that is enraged, interspersed with sighs torn from the eyes that are lost between the intense light and unexpected glimpses of the illustrations, in a sequence that more or less resembles this :

a human crocodile (we will be in a world populated with animals), no there is a human (mmm where are we?);

• oh but look what light, my mother is dazzling!

ok the world is populated by humans and animals;

• oh but look at a Milanese tram (!) But a bridge like that is American (!) And those buildings are necessarily Roman (!);

but where is the crocodile going?

• oh but what beautiful and intimate spaces, it seems to walk in a Parisian alley, but advertising is in Italian, but this metro is not just Parisian.

ok then we are in the world populated by animals and people, is morning we are going somewhere, an appointment? at work? ah well yes the title speaks of profession ...

• oh but look what a shine, what a clear air! Look at the leaves of that bush and the light behind them, I would stay here to try and see what they hide;

flowers, packages ... will go on a love date;

• ohhhh but this square seen from above ?! Take your breath away!

A zoo, mmm, a locker room, mmm;

• that air suspended, you feel the humidity and the pleasant heat of space!

hahahahaha. Brilliant.

The silent plot that Giovanna Zoboli writes is unexpected and - I imagine and the author herself confirms it! - well marked in all its passages so as to prepare, in an ascending climax, the final as unpredictable as it is alienating. A mystery seems to envelop the protagonist and the reader, involved and intrigued, can not help but follow the page page narration, with a fast pace, until the final dissolution.

All this would run out, however, at the first reading (unveiled the arcane, end of the game) and instead the illustrative apparatus of Mariachiara Di Giorgiohe succeeds, as always, in giving books an engaging beauty, full of details, echoes and atmospheres in which he finds himself at ease and where he wants to be. But it is not just a question of skill, because the illustrator manages to get in perfect harmony with the story: the double nature of the protagonist and of the company is reflected in the spaces that recall different places, yet the consistency with which this world is made is perfectly natural , so that it would not surprise us to see a giraffe in the street, raising our eyes from the pages of the book. The images can reclaim their space of originality and interpretation with undoubted talent: the details included in the tables, the sequences structured in mosaic on the page as in the comics with quick exchanges of points of view (near, far, from the top, bias, in front, behind ...), the figures that come out with ease from the confines of the illustrations ... and the light, the light that lets you breathe, with perspectives that put the reader from time to time in the dark (of the subway tunnel, for example ) or in the clearest clarity of the day. Every rereading of the text is a discovery: we catch anticipations or simply particular minutes to dwell on, amazed.

The long dormant wait that this book has lived is the example that the agreement between text (and I mean text, not author!) And illustration is not a negligible element in the design of a book, what was born is a jewel of beauty and rare wit.

From 5 years, for everyone.