Carmen Chica / Manuel Marsol: O Tempo Do Gigante

Today I read in the publisher’s newsletter that O Tempo Do Gigante has been awarded at the Comic Festival Amadora BD in the category of Best Children’s Book Illustration. I was very glad to see the news, because this is a book that took me a little while to understand, and which I love more every time I open it.

I have to admit, when I first saw the cover and the trailer I was a bit sceptical. I could not place the style. The colours felt a little washed out, the figures slightly stiff. But the deeper I delved into it, the more it pulled me in. The Giant’s Time is a quiet, atmospheric picture book about the passage of time, about memory, and about the small things that happen around us when we are not looking carefully enough.

The story follows a giant who has lived for a very long time. He measures days not in hours but in seasons; he has seen forests grow and rivers shift their course. Around his feet, much shorter, faster lives flicker by — children, animals, weather. The book asks us, gently, what it would feel like to slow down to the giant’s pace, and what we might begin to notice if we did.

Manuel Marsol’s illustrations are full of soft greens and dusty pinks. There is a Hopper-like stillness to many of the spreads. Carmen Chica’s text is sparse and reads almost like a poem. Together they make a book that does not behave like most picture books — it does not rush, it does not explain, it does not perform. It simply waits for you to settle in.

Worth tracking down, especially if you collect work in Portuguese or Spanish.