“In short, a layered and wonderfully hilarious story with a recognizable base layer, good for young and old. Original and extremely funny. Enough qualities to recommend it.”
“You have been warned. Take enough time to look at the beautiful pictures with your child. You just keep looking at it, keep discovering new details and meet (four) colorful, quirky characters.”
“I always have some reservations to give a book a perfect score, but “The Blues against the Reds” has no downsides, not even a small one.”
The Blue Against the Red
Bluebeard and Redhead hate each other to the bone. They each make plans to smash the other to smithereens from their Blue and Red fortresses. But one morning, when the Blue and Red knights are on their way to meet in battle, things don’t go according to plan…
Benjamin Leroy wrote a funny story about brave and cowardly knights on a quest. Armed only with a four coloured pen, he drew a whole world in only blue, red, green and black ink.
Picture book
30 x 23 cm, 40 pages
Ages 5 and up
€ 14.99
Text and illustrations: Benjamin Leroy - Graphic Design: Kris Demey
Published by Gottmer Publishers(NL) - ISBN 9789025773137
Contact Mara Joustra at Gottmer Publishers: foreignrights@gottmer.nl
About this book
This book started when I purchased a four coloured pen at the art store. A little later I began sketching with it at my drawing desk and drew knights with big funny noses, big ears and beer bellies. Blue knights. Red knights. Fortresses. Forests. The game was on!
I always loved drawing with ballpoint pens, especially in class when I was bored from math lessons. The sides of my pages were full and and later the pages in my books, like ‘The Giant’ and ‘Painters & Spies’. I challenged myself to create a world with only blue, red, black and green ink. I like to work with these limitations and stretch my imagination.
I love the brilliance of ballpoint pen blue. It had to be precisely a certain kind of blue, and nothing else! That’s why we ended up printing in four Pantone colours. It was a complicated process, but I’m really happy with the result.
I’ve always liked writing: stories, songs texts, blogs,… and before making this book, I made up stories in collaboration with Jaap Robben, like Tinkleman, the Suzie Ruzie series and The Sourballs, so I know how to build a good story. I felt I had to write this story myself, thinking about the endless chivalrous adventures with my youngest brother in the garden. And so I just started writing.
Once the story is complete, you start to see what it is really about. Under the ‘funny story layer’ you’ll find a staple of other layers about how people create an image of the enemy that looks much more diabolic than it really is. Enemies are often much more alike than they seem to be. It’s also a story about gender roles: why are knights always men that only fight and drink beer? It’s very current if you ask me.
I had a lot of fun making this book and I hope a lot of future readers will have fun with it as well!