뼈

Somebooks is a Korean publishing house known for its high quality silent books. Their publications are always exquisite, using the most outstanding bindings, formats and paper qualities. 뼈, which translates to "The bone", is no exeption, but this time the paper quality is not only exceptionally beautiful, it's also essential to the storytelling.

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The cover of 뼈 is black, decorated with a shining, embossed gold bone. Inside the cover, there is a small envelope filled with translucent images of a dog and his bone in various situations. The real surprise though, happens on the first full spread: The pages of the book itself is also translucent, so that in each image you see the shadows of the image before, and the shadow of the one to come. 

The artist offer a beautiful explanation for this choce on Somebook' s Instagram page: "I wanted to make a book that the pictures of a page can be the background of the other page using translucent papers. Each page has its own independence but all page depends on each other to make the completion of the book. During our lives, a lot of moments gather together and then the moments scatter again. Nevertheless we need to live the moments with all our efforts."

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The composition is perfect, with the shadows of what has been and those of what is to come adds to both the mood and action of each spread. Poong's gorgeous drawings are made in black ink, picturing great waves (Hokusai´s art comes to mind), flocks of black birds, schools of tropical fish, and groups of fascinating jellyfish. Poong' s pen makes nature come alive to a point where you kind of expect a bird to fly right off the page or a wave to suddenly crash into the room.​

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Adding the translucent pictures to the story creates a fun puzzle that can be solved in many ways: Where do they fit? This makes for great storytelling and endless negotiations, and because everything is visual, there is the possibility of keeping this process wordless if needed, for example in groups where the children do not share a common verbal language.