Meet the creatives: All Our Families Are Awesome

1. What’s your favourite moment or character in the book and why?

Charlotte: I love the “tiny family of two.” Or the uncle and aunt, who don’t have children and have a dog. I love these characters because they really show how you can create a family in a different way.

2. What are some interesting messages or conversational points your book inspires?

Charlotte: There are many different types of families. Society can sometimes convey the message that only the traditional family is “normal.” We wanted to show that, for children, every family has its own unique characteristics. They don’t think in terms of normality. For example, being an only child can be great or not so great. Having two homes has its advantages and disadvantages. In the story the children share what family means for them.

We made some choices and of course there are other family models. To create the book we interviewed lots of different types of families to learn about their experiences. It was important to us to make sure the book contained lots of different voices. This book is dedicated to these families.

3. What materials and techniques were used for the book’s illustrations?

Ian: It is a mix of different techniques. For the characters who are talking on the left pages, it is all digital, created on my iPad with the Procreate app. The illustrations on the right pages were made on paper with traditional media, like watercolour, pencils, pastels, etc. 

I used these different technique to show that there is story part and the evocation part. At first I was going to do everything on the iPad, but that was before we had the idea of the evocations on a separate page. 

4. What’s your favourite illustration in the book and why?

Ian: That’s a difficult question! I like them all, but maybe the one with the façade in the red and blue colours. I like the mood of it, and it shows many things. But most of all because it is a typical Brussels house and looks a little bit like the house we lived in for 13 years and where we welcomed our two daughters home. 

5. What did you most connect with in the story, and how did that come out in your illustration work? Were you going for a certain feel or mood?

Ian: I made the story together with my wife, author Charlotte Bellière. We didn’t want to just have a catalogue with different types of families. We also wanted to tell a story with a beginning and an end. So after a bit of research we came up with the idea of having a group of children talking about their families, which shows that even though they are all very different they all have their own normalities.

It is often when we get older that we begin to understand that there are certain expectations about what a family is or should be, but for children these ideas don’t exist. Every type of family is normal for them. and it should be for everyone. That is what I really like about the story. All types of families are equally special.

In the illustrations I wanted to show the variety of families by using different colours for all the illustrations on the pages on the right of the book. I also tried to draw happy situations with warm colours to represent the warm cocoon that every family is supposed to be. 

About the creatives:

Charlotte and Ian, along with their two children, are an awesome family just like all the families in this book. They have also created several picture books together. They live in Brussels, Belgium.

Read on to find out more about them!

Charlotte Bellière is an author, notably of children’s books in which she likes to recount the extraordinary adventures of ordinary people, drawing on everyday life, insignificant details, and secondary characters to find the magic in simple things. She has been working with Alice Jeunesse publishers since 2011, when she published her first book, J’ai Perdu Ma Pantoufle (I Lost My Slipper). She won the 2019 SCAM Jeunesse Prize for Le géant Ou L’incroyable Aventure des émotions (The Giant or the Incredible Adventure of Emotions). Her successes include Cette Nuit on Part en Vacances (We’re Going on Vacation Tonight) (2020) and Et Toi, Ta Famille (And You, Your Family) (2021). Most of her books are illustrated by her partner, Ian De Haes, but she also collaborates with others, such as Orbie on Attends, Je Vais T’aider (Wait, I’ll Help You) (2021).

Charlotte is also a French teacher in Brussels. She helps teenagers arriving from all over the world to learn French and settle into life in Belgium. Recently, she has been trying her hand at new writing experiences. She has co-written a television series, written the script for a webtoon, and will release her first children’s novel in a few months.

Ian De Haes is a Belgian author and illustrator. After studying computer graphics techniques (specialising in animation) and illustration, he worked for 10 years as a bookseller specialising in children’s books, before launching himself as a full-time illustrator. Over time, he became one of the leading illustrators of the Belgian publishing house Alice jeunesse, with whom he has published around 20 books. His collaboration with the author Charlotte Bellière, his partner, led to around ten books. He also writes occasionally, notably Les colères de Simon and Superlumineuse, which became bestsellers translated into many languages.

He has won a number of professional awards including in 2019: Prix Scam jeunesse pour Le Géant ou L’incroyable Aventure des émotions, in 2020: Prix des libraires du Québec for Superlumineuse and Finaliste du Golden Pinwheel Young illustrators Competition and in 2022: Prix des incorruptibles CE2/CM1 for La Classe des Mammouths.

---

Find out more about All Our Families Are Awesome here.