★The book's illustrations have been selected for the Bologna Children's Book Fair Illustration Exhibition! Illustrator Jean Maillard has been selected as one of the designers for the Bologna Children's Book Fair 2021.
★The children's works of Soviet author Daniil Charms are given new life by Jean Maillard's illustrations.
★Suitable for ages 5+, with complete English translation available.

Once upon a time, a lion, an elephant, a giraffe, a deer, an ostrich, a moose, a wild horse and a dog argued about who could run the fastest. So they decided to organize a race. Whoever would be the first to go around the lake would be the fastest.
But this was not a regular race. For example, after a while, the lion felt tired and decided to stop for a nap. The moose and giraffe's idea was to drink all the water in the lake so that they could go straight across the lake... Ostrich kept laughing at them, but he didn't realize that he was running in the opposite direction.

Daniil Kharms (1905-1942) was a Russian writer, poet, and playwright who composed short stories, poems, epigrams, plays, and children’s books. His greatness and significance were only discovered in the 1960s, two decades after his death. He was influenced by Khlebnikov and Truphanov and was among the founders of a group of avant-garde subversive poets called OBERIU (Union of Real Art). In 1931, some members of the group were imprisoned, among them Kharms. After his imprisonment, Kharms was no longer able to get his adult works published and therefore focused on children’s magazines only. In 1941, he was arrested again after supposedly speaking out against the conscription to WWII, and died of starvation in a psychiatric asylum in 1942.

Jean Mallard was born in France in 1997. He grew up surrounded by the comics of Moebius and the films of Miyazaki, and quickly fell in love with drawing. His preferred techniques are watercolor and gouache, with which he works to create infinite worlds open to all. His artisanal approach to drawing is at the heart of his research.
In 2019 he moves to Naples, where he discovers the atmosphere of the ancient Mediterranean cities that will inspire his two main exhibitions: Via Miracoli in 2020, then L'Heure Bleue in 2022 at Slow Galerie. His drawings were selected for the Bologna Illustration Fair in 2018 and 2020, and for Angoulême in 2019. He received the Grand Award in Bologna in 2018.