Idol Award Laureate 2013 1
in the forming of the characters. Her great talen
t as a picturebook author is apparent in the overall experience created by the interaction of text and images. Isol was involved in a project of a different kind where several artists each described an Argentinian tango to children in book form. She chose to illustrate a tango by Reinaldo Yiso. The result was El bazar de los juguetes (2009), a beautiful and slightly enigmatic picturebook about wish fulfilment and secret dreams. Isol also explores new formats for the books themselves. One example is Tener un patito es útil (2007), a book for young children in a surprising, “double-narrated”, foldout form that switches the narrator’s perspective. Read from one direction, it is a boy’s story about all the reasons why it would be good to own a duck. From the other direction, it is a duck’s story about the various possible uses for a small boy. One of Isol’s most recent works, Nocturno (2011), is printed in fluorescent colours so that it can be read in bed in the dark, as an introduction to the night’s dreams. Asked why she creates picturebooks for children – which she personally is not certain that she does – Isol replies: “I’m a grown-up, and I happen to like them. I like the fact that they encrypt no lesson, that they are not closed in form or meaning, that text and image establish a dialogue which at times may be paradoxical or slanting. Not only mine: I love all good illustrated books, I have consumed them all my life. I hate it being said ‘it’s for children’ when something is bad. It gets on my nerves. Working with childhood, evoking it, is something absolutely powerful.” Isol’s 20-odd works have now been published in almost as many countries. Besides being a successful illustrator, she sings in the electronic pop duo Isol/Zypce alongside her brother and in a baroque ensemble called The Excuse. She has also made recordings with the American band Alsace Lorraine and the Argentinian band Entre Ríos, of which she was a member from 2000 to 2005.