Bernardo P. Carvalho

Bernardo: This book's story started a long time ago, when here at Planeta Tangerina we started with this idea of trying to tell parallel stories and different things that take place at the same time, in the same book.

I believe that being publishers as well as illustrators gives us a great advantage in being able to take chances and make books as we wish to make them – about whichever topics we wish – rather than merely working on-demand.

With this comes the desire to explore and knead the book in a different way – to tell stories from left to right, from right to left, and both ways simultaneously.

Anything is allowed, except making folds, holes in the pages or pop-ups, because that's cheating (and very expensive).

When talking about ‘Follow the Firefly / Run, Rabbit, Run’, it's impossible not to at least mention two other books:

In ‘The World in a Second’ (Planeta Tangerina, 2006 – to be published in English by Enchanted Lion Books in April 2015), we froze the world for one second and looked at the many things that happen at precisely that second, all around the world.

‘Two Roads’ (Planeta Tangerina, 2009) is a book with two parallel stories that, in a similar way to ‘Follow the Firefly / Run, Rabbit, Run’, move in opposite directions – but in this case with text and drawings overlaid and inverted.

In that sense, ‘Follow the Firefly / Run, Rabbit, Run’ is a sort of extension of this idea of telling things that are happening at exactly the same time, or as in this instance, two different stories that share the same stage, or one story that gives rise to another, or stories that latch onto one another in a never-ending loop.

When one ends, the next one starts – and it starts because the other one has ended.

Confused? It sounds confusing when told this way, but it isn't.

The most important thing was to get the reader to follow just one story without consciously being aware of the other one, or at least to make sure the other story didn't get in the way of the first one, and vice versa.

As always, I ruminated over the idea for some time, making tons of small sequences in my sketchbooks and on spare pieces of paper or coffee napkins that I then subsequently lost here and there... and for this reason I apologise for the lack of sketches, as I'm very disorganised and found almost nothing.

Due to my lack of discipline, or just because I enjoy experimenting, or for some other reason, I rarely reuse the same technique from one book to the next, and this one was no exception. That's why I decided to illustrate it with watercolour – something I'd never done before.

Techniques where patience and precision are paramount are not my strength, and I'm usually more restrained regarding excessive drawing and confusing scenes. But here, I realised it could actually come in handy – to sort of camouflage the other story hiding behind it.

With plainer colours and fewer details, it would have been harder to distance ourselves from the other story.

In other words, for this book to work it was very important that the two stories be completely readable and autonomous, despite sharing the same set of pages and setting.

For two stories to share the same pages and setting, the challenge is more in the organisation and how to display the images within the frame, rather than in the illustration process itself.

Both narratives in this book are journeys in opposite directions: One from the forest to the city, the other from the city to the forest.

Follow the Firefly
In the first story, which begins at a barbecue around a campfire in the woods, we follow a firefly who's feeling sad because he doesn't have a blinking light to keep him company. And so he sets off alone on a long journey, asking (politely as only fireflies can be) the other animals that he meets along the way if they've “seen a little blinking light?” All the directions he receives point him to the big city, where he finally meets and falls in love with a light that blinks: a traffic light.

Run, Rabbit, Run
That reciprocated love between firefly and traffic light (now completely overrun with passion and blinking lights) causes a huge crash at the crossing, with several cars involved. Among these cars is a pickup truck belonging to a hunter of exotic animals (like chickens and little bunnies).
From the impact of the crash, the cage of one of the white bunnies opens and the bunny escapes. The hunter's guard dog was alert and notices this, and so begins an epic chase that leads them both from the city to the forest.

In the forest, the bunny finds shelter on the back of his gorilla friend, and now the dog in turn finds himself alone and lost, far from home and not knowing his way back.

Luckily for the dog, our bunny is a pretty cool bunny and invites him to a barbecue with the rest of his friends – one of which is a firefly who's feeling sad because he doesn't have a blinking light to keep him company.

Illustrations © Bernardo P. Carvalho / Planeta Tangerina. Post translated by Gengo and edited by dPICTUS.

Buy this picturebook

Olhe, por favor, não viu uma luzinha a piscar? / Corre, coelhinho, corre!
Follow the Firefly / Run, Rabbit, Run

Bernardo P. Carvalho

Planeta Tangerina, Portugal, 2013

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In this book, two stories go in opposite directions! Reading the book from left to right, we follow the adventure of a firefly searching for a small blinking light – and reading from right to left, we join a frightened rabbit who is being chased by a hunter's guard dog.

This is a highly original and inventive picturebook for attentive and active readers.

• Portuguese: Planeta Tangerina
• English: Book Island
• Dutch: Book Island
• Portuguese (Brazil): Alaúde Editorial / Tordesilhinhas
• Korean: Picture Book Gongjackso