Masha du Toit

I wonder what I would have thought of December’s Travels if I’d read it as a child.  Many of the children’s books I love now I found too intense when I was little. December’s Travels is illustrated by the Slovakian illustrator Dussan Kallay:

The story, by Yugoslavian Mischa Damjan tells what happens when the month of December decides to visit the other months in the year.  Here is December preparing toys for Christmas:

Here is a scene from March, which in this book is early spring.  (Where I live March is early autumn.) You can see the flowers just emerging from the ground, and the birds returning:

This is one of my favourite pages – December meets June, surrounded by all the evidence of midsummer:

And then October is simply stunning:

And eventually December returns to his own time of year, and finds that it is lovely too, and filled with food, toys and food, and brooding cats:

Dussan Kallay creates more grown-up and disturbing images, as you can see on this page.  You will need to scroll down quite far before you get to his work, and you will see some very strange images on the way there…probably not safe for work. 🙂