La caccia notturna

"La caccia notturna" ("The nightly hunt") is truly a silent book. Stastna masterfully portrays mysterious intruders in a dark house in the middle of the night, and lets the reader in on the chase that follows. Using only black, white and purple, her simple, but beautiful pictures creates an atmosphere of nightly silence, making the readers lower their voice as if to not wake up anyone that might be sleeping. Stastna invites the reader to join a magic hunt, the kind that leaves us rooting for the culprits: A snake and an armadillo, both masters of disguise. But beware, finding them takes real effort!

 

Besides the clever use of colors, Stastna shows her mastery of telling visual stories in other ways: Like in the choice of animals "breaking" into the house. It is a snake and an armadillo, both creatures that are potentially dangerous (snakes can be poisonous, armadillos, though peaceful, might spread plague..) Readers of all ages will intuitively understand that the two of them do not belong in this house, that they are intruders. 

To tell the story, Statstna uses both full spreads, panels and two-page spreads. Most of the illustrations are treasure-hunt pages that makes the reader look for the two intruders. (They are REALLY good at hiding. Try for yourself with the picture on the bottom of this page, how long did it take you to spot the armadillo and the snake?) Others are for moving the story along, like the picture below, where we understand that the cat has, indeed, searched throught the entire house.

 

Even though the books makes you root for the snake and the armadillo, the cat is my favourite character. It is just so masterfully illustrated: A very simple black shape, brought to life with very natural-looking cat moves and just a couple of white lines to accentuate his ears and eyes. It´s brilliant! Stasta shows the same ability to create a lot of expression with very few details on the first full spread, where we see the snake and armadillo heading for the house, walking on a purple road against a white background. Even though the picture is really bright, the artist makes us understand it is night time by using just asimple cut-out of the moon and most importantly, the long shadows of the animals, plants and house.