Standard version - 28 €

Numbered version (16/33 to 33/33) - 150 €

European Design Award 2017. Book sent within 24 hours. Free shipping in Europe.

Always the same story tells the same story in three ways: in short, medium-length and long versions, because we love creating reading experiences. Reading is indeed a journey, not a destination: the end doesn’t matter in the end. This book is in French but the short version of the story has been translated into English in the book.

BOOK CONCEPT

The main theme of the book is about sharing and evokes subtlely the concept and issues raised by borders. Basically, if we would share more, we would all be more happy. The book starts with a simple story for children, a man who feeds one bird but doen’t want other birds to come in his plate. The hero is at the same time the good and the bad guy, which is not common in literature for children. Each of the three versions of the story starts with the same sentence and ends with (almost) the same sentence. Progressing in the versions, we understand the reasons why the hero behaves like this, the text gets more and more complete and detailed while the illustrations get simpler and simpler, more zoomed, almost abstract, like blind. Always the same story is a demonstration of the human being becoming more complex while getting adult, and simple gestures like sharing are not natural and spontaneous anymore, as if our sophistication prevents us from doing the right thing.

ONE FAMILY BOOK

The three versions of the story are bound into one book only. In fact we have created one “family book” for all ages. Josephin Ritschel has produced her drawings based on photographs of Le Havre. For version 1 (children), the illustrations are in full colour, for version 2 (teenagers), the illustrations are in duotones, for version 3 (adults), the illustrations are in black. Papers and fonts are also carefully chosen for each version in order to offer a panorama of layouts, customised for each reader : we also simulate playful stickers for kids, hidden in the text; we have drawn unique emojis to go with definitions for teenagers, etc. Paper is thicker and font is more playfull for version 1 whereas we get more “serious” for older readers. This does not prevent us from taking great care of the layouts for each age. As our previous books on Le Havre, Toujours la même histoire is a visual tribute to this French unique city.