Flying Eye Books to publish second Francesca Sanna title

Flying Eye Books, part of Nobrow, will next month publish a second picture book by Switzerland-based illustrator Francesca Sanna., who won the Klaus Flugge Prize and an Amnesty CILIP honour in 2017.

Me and My Fear is about a girl who has to travel to a new country and start a new school. Her ‘fear’ tells her to be alone and afraid, because she doesn’t understand her the same language as her classmates, but she must conquer her fear and learn to make friends.

Sanna said she came up with the idea for the book when promoting her first title, The Journey, which is about a family escaping conflict, in different countries around the world.

“The Journey ends right before the arrival to a new place but months after the book was published I was still working with children during presentations and workshops on the question ‘what happens next?’,” she said, adding: “I have always been interested in exploring the theme of anxiety from a visual point of view, and finally I connected it to the topic of 'integration', trying to imagine how scary it is for a child to arrive to a new country where everything is new and unfamiliar.”

Nobrow is aiming to publish the book in September (h/b, £12.99).