The Tiny King - Softcover

Taro Miura is an award-winning author/illustrator and graphic designer. Born in Aichi, Japan, in 1968, Taro specialized in silkscreen printing at Osaka University of Arts. He was first selected to exhibit his work in the Bologna Children's Book Fair Illustrators Exhibition fiction category in 2001, and has since exhibited his work in the Fiction and Non-Fiction categories several times. Taro works internationally and he is regularly published in Japan, France, Switzerland and Italy. This is his first book with Walker. About The Tiny King he says, "It's a simple story about a lonely king who gets married, is blessed with children, and whose life is completely changed by having a family. If this story reminds the fathers, mothers and children who read this book about the magnificence of having a family, it will make me very happy." Taro lives in Japan.

*Starred Review* A tiny king (depicted actual size on the cover) lives all alone in a big castle. His soldiers are large and stern. His dining table is beyond abundant, but “he could never finish so much food all by himself.” His bed is lonely. But the tiny king meets and marries a big princess, and happiness arrives. Big happiness. Now his soldiers are dismissed on holiday, his table is attended (the tiny king and big queen have 10 children, after all), and his bed is full of family. Working in digital collage, Miura combines flat blocky shapes, intricate cutouts, photographs, and other bits of iconographic paraphernalia in bright colors, establishing a cohesive and arresting style that references everything from Matisse to Madison Avenue. At the book’s opening, this visual array hums on a background of deep, flat black. The arrival of the big princess ushers in a new day, however, and with it, a wave of background color. Now the same scenes sing on top of brilliant pinks and greens and oranges. The simple, old-fashioned quality of the story and the modern drama of the illustrations combine to create an especially dynamic and resonant literary experience, simultaneously innovative and nostalgic, sure to charm legions of tiny listeners. Preschool-Grade 2. --Thom Barthelmess