“Salimeh’s colour palette is vivid, bright and positive, and her illustrations evoke a kaleidoscope of colour and sound. While contemplating her images, you can imagine yourself basking in the warmth of the golden sunlight, wading into the sky blue of the surrounding ocean, trekking through the lushness of the deep purple and green foliage and meandering the rainbow-coloured houses of the village.”
— kidsbookexplorer.com
18+2 Woodpeckers
18+2 Woodpeckers is a story about children with special needs. It is the story of a group of children, 18 of them are able to hear sounds and 2 of them are not. Then, there is an emotional relationship between these children and a group of woodpeckers. This connection eventually reaches to the point that the woodpeckers realize that the oral language, the language produced by articulate sounds, is only one form of communication. There is another form of language which is named sign language and is produced with the hands and the face or even with different kinds of signs or shapes. In this story, when the woodpeckers communicate with those two deaf children with the use of their feathers, sign language is born.
Text by Hadi Mohammadi
Illustrartions by Salimeh Babakhan
Picture book | 21*28 Cm | 32 Pages
Published by IRCHL (TAK Books)
ISBN: 978-622-6986-33-5
Release date: January 2021
Sold Rights: Turky
Awards:
* Winner (Laureates) of image of the book Illustration Award, 2021
* Nominated for the Golden Pen of Belgrade, 2021
* Finalist of Bologna Childrens`s Book Fair | 2021
* Selected for Cow Illustration Biennale, 2020
* Selected for Brightness Illustration Anuual, 2020
Reviews and Introductions:
https://www.kidsbookexplorer.com/18-2-woodpeckers-mohammad-hadi-mohammadi-salimeh-babakhan/
https://erdemyayinlari.com.tr/kitap/182-agackakan/
https://roozrang.com/salimeh-babakhan/
The dialogue between two diverse worlds
The Institute for Research on the History of Children’s Literature publishing house started the Intercultural Project in collaboration with Marit Törnqvist, the prominent Dutch-Swedish illustrator, to the Intercultural Project to produce quality picture books for the “Read with Me” program in Iran in 2015. In this project, Marit Törnqvist as the art director, cooperating with Zohreh Ghaeni, worked with a group of young and creative Iranian illustrators to produce picture books with high quality illustrations and content for Iranian children. The Achievement of the several years of continuous work in this project has been several quality books written by Hadi Mohammadi which are marked with this phrase in the catalog: “The dialogue between two diverse worlds project”.