I Have an Idea!

Suddenly you feel a puff of breath… oh! It’s an idea, and it’s magnificent! Or it will be once you’ve survived the messy, bubbly stage and captured it, asked some questions, made some changes and done your best to craft it into shape….

As an artist and creator of wonderful things, Hervé Tullet knows about ideas and often explores visual interactivity both on the page and on the screen. In this beautifully-designed hardback with bright cloth spine, he captures the unpredictability, tension and thrill of creativity and shares his insights with readers both young and not-so-young.

With its black hand-lettered font on crisp white pages enlivened by primary-coloured dabs and strands, I Have an Idea! develops the Tullet-aesthetic familiar to readers of his previous books. Here, vibrant DNA-like elements (idea-particles?) are discovered in an explosion of colour amongst monochrome ranks of unresponsive lines. For inspiration to take shape and spring to life, as Tullet shows, we have only to offer these particles a chance to fizz their way into our hearts and minds. Play with them, he advises. Combine and recombine them, allow them to express themselves and listen – really listen – to what they say and we, too, will be in possession of that most wonderful of things – a good idea. And once we’ve noticed something interesting - something that makes us sit up and think yes!– we can begin the task of recording, organizing, interrogating and amending. There may be seeds of
madness in the best ideas, but they won’t flower or bear fruit in fallow ground.

Tullet’s wisely entertaining text acts as a guide, but it’s his illustrations that do the work. The very act of looking at these images communicates something important and really quite profound. For a book to do this so accessibly and with such apparent ease marks it out as a Very Good Idea Indeed.

I Have an Idea! will please audiences from thoughtful four-year-olds to adults and makes a great starting point for discussion as well as offering an intriguing and enjoyable solo read.