Let’s Go Monsters

Polish and English titles are the same.
Publisher: Wydawnictwo Dwie Siostry
Warsaw 2014
Dimensions: 30 × 19 cm
Board Book: 18 p.
ISBN: 978-83-63696-42-9

Sequel to “Pora na potwora” – Polish version published in 2013 in Poland. It was designed for non-English speaking children (or younger English natives) to play and learn English words. The book consists of 9 linocuts representing animals, a UFO and a bus. Each page is divided into three stripes. Children can turn parts of the page and build hundreds (729 to be exact) of monsters while looking for words accompanying the pictures.

Unfortunately, the construction of the book makes it impossible to translate it to other languages. Foreign editions would have to be created from scratch, and this applies to the choice of words, mechanics and the linocuts themselves. So every foreign edition wouldn’t be a new version of the base book, but a totally new book. Just like this one is not a version of “Pora na potwora” but a brand new book, with new words and new linocuts.

The font on the cover is our Mr Dodo and the big letters inside are from Lelum Sans by Michał Jarociński.

Planning was crucial for this project. If you imagine this book as a table with three columns and nine rows with a single letter in each cell, then every row will represent a single word. But there’s a catch here. You can’t let any letter appear twice in a given column. Otherwise you could have a correct word matched with incorrect image.

All of the linocuts were created in a traditional way without using any digital filters or other tricks. Everything was cut and then printed using a simple tea spoon (as a replacement for the printing press), water-based heavy printing ink and a cheap laser printer paper.