THE JUNGLE SURVIVAL GUIDE
Guide de survie dans la jungle - Hao Shuo - 26 x 32 cm - 40 pages - hard cover - €10 - February 2020
A book falls out of a yellow-tracksuit-wearing hiker’s bag. A strange creature, a yeti-like blob, quickly picks it up. Fantastic! A jungle survival guide!
The creature immediately begins reading and interpreting this manual of tips and tricks for lost hikers. Using its skills and intelligence, the creature creates a series of poetic inventions, that far surpass the model.
The poor snake that bit the strange creature is the first to suffer; what a wonderful plaster its skin makes!
Then, the sunlight hurts the blob’s eyes; what could it use to make sunglasses? Ice and an octopus, of course!
With a great deal of imagination and poetry, the strange creature takes possession of its environment and transforms it.
These funny little scenes will delight young and old alike, and inspire children to become, like the strange creature, little versatile geniuses!
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Mention – Opera Prima – Bologna Book Fair 2021
Comments of the jury:
"This wordless metatextual book is a visual delight and parody, that shows the limitations and creative possibilities inherent in following guidebooks. Presented as a classically cloth bound jungle guide book, it physically mimics authoritative texts to contrast with the modern graphics with clean lines and solid colors within. Hilarity ensues when a strange creature finds a guide book on surviving the jungle in which he lives, and attempts to follow its guidance."
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THE CITY SURVIVAL GUIDE
Guide de survie dans la ville - Hao Shuo - 26 x 32 cm - 44 pages - hard cover - €14.50 - February 2022
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The creature from the Survival Guide to the Jungle embarks on a new journey, this time to the city.
With his guide in hand, he wanders the streets in search of animals and humans that live there, looking up all the answers to his questions along the way. His book is full of practical ideas, that the creature
adapts in his own way, using objects that he finds here and there: flat tyres to make dumbbells, a mop as a hairpiece, a fish bone as a comb and lots more.
But how can he protect himself from the bright red sun? The creature has an ingenious solution! He gathers seeds, acorns and dandelion buds, and plants them in his new hair, letting the rain and sun make them grow. He then invites his dog friend to relax with him in the shade, much to the passers’- by surprise.
Colourful and funny illustrations, full of imagination and original ideas, in the same clever and curious vein as Shuo Hao’s Guide de survie dans la jungle, awarded at the 2020 Bologna Book Fair.
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THE SEA SURVIVAL GUIDE
Guide de survie dans la mer - Hao Shuo - 17 x 25 cm - 56 pages - hard cover - €14.50 - January 2023
The funny creature from the City Survival Guide has drawn a new album from its library tree: it's a Sea Survival Guide! It settles down comfortably near the river, opens the new book, but… how to console this frog who is sobbing on her water lily? Fortunately, the precious guide is filled with solutions for all problems, and a new wacky adventure can begin! The comical and offbeat situations merrily succeed one another, whilst our favourite creature cleverly and ingeniously bypasses the obstacles that separate her from a charming mermaid...
In the third volume of this series, rewarded with a prestigious prize at the Bologna Book Fair, Chinese author Hao Shuo poetically diverts codes and mischievously toys with the traditional image of Prince Charming freeing his Princess. Accurately constructing an apparently simple and colorful universe, the artist takes her reader by surprise again and again, and it is funny and refreshing every time.
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Hao Shuo was born in China about 30 years ago. After studying at the Beaux-Arts in Beijing, she spent a few months at the Sorbonne before joining the illustration studio of the Haute École des Arts du Rhin, in Strasbourg. Always between two countries - and on the plane - she takes care, with French and Chinese friends, of the micro-publishing collective Hors Service. Guide to Survival in the Jungle is her first book in France.
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