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My Valley Workshop at Albertine
March 26, 2017 @ 11:00 am - 12:30 pm
Please join us along with French translator Alyson Waters for a morning of reading and fun at Albertine, based on the book Ma Vallée by French children’s book author and illustrator Claude Ponti, one of the most innovative children’s book authors of our generation. This workshop hosted by Elsewhere Editions in participation with the French Embassy and Albertine will be a playful and creative session for kids to read and interact with Ponti’s captivating fictional universe created through wordplay and illustrations of incredible detail and beauty.
“A mix of comical vignettes and broad vistas illustrate an account of the lives and misadventures of a clan of tiny Twims.”
— Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
“Ponti’s beautiful, intricate illustrations contain strange details hinting at larger stories. The guileless narrative sounds like it came directly from the brain of a child with a vivid imagination, and fanciful kids drawn by the enchanting artwork might find their own imaginations sparked by this odd, playful French import.”
— Booklist
Claude Ponti is one of France’s most celebrated children’s writers and illustrators. His works create captivating fictional universes through wordplay and illustrations of incredible detail and beauty. Ponti found his vocation as a children’s author with the birth of his daughter, Adèle, for whom he created his first picture book, L’Album d’Adèle. He has since won numerous awards, including the 2006 Prix Sorcières Spécial for his lifetime achievement.
“Children’s literature is an intimate soul-to-soul exchange between the reader and the author.” – Claude Ponti
Alyson Waters is a translator of modern and contemporary literary fiction, criticism, and theory, as well as art history. Her book translations include works by Vassilis Alexakis, Louis Aragon, Daniel Arasse, René Belletto, Reda Bensmaia, Emmanuel Bove, Eric Chevillard, Albert Cossery, Yasmina Khadra, and Tzvetan Todorov. Waters has received a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship, a PEN Translation Fund Grant, and residency grants from the Centre national du livre, the Villa Gillet in Lyon, France, and the Banff International Literary Translation Centre in Canada. She currently teaches literary translation at New York and Columbia Universities.