★ Award: Medalla Colibrí IBBY Chile Mejor Libro-Álbum
★ A life-story without beginning or end, of one and all beings inhabiting this tragic Earth.
★ Full English translation available.

"Animal" is an anonymous biography of the story of life. It is a litany on our misfortunes and joys, which we cannot measure because they transcend our individuality. A question for bone memory; the memory of each element that is drawn and grows on our skin - hair, hardness, furrows and turgidity - and how all that we’ve become has been patiently and silently formed by the ubiquitous wheel of time and by the infinite stories under the sun, in the undergrowth, over and under the water and in the sky, like millennia eroding and giving shape to a mountain. Something soft cries out, piercing the fossilized bones. Something that yearns to flourish, that has lived countless times, but that is always to be born. A story without beginning or end, of one and all beings inhabiting this tragic Earth.

Blanco Pantoja
Santiago, Chile, 1983

Illustrator, writer and editor. His constant interdisciplinary research and development has led him to collaborate on music, film and theater projects. He has been included in the IBBY Honor List (2012, 2018), in the White Ravens list (2017) and has twice received the Colibrí-IBBY Chile Medal (2015, 2017) for his work on the publications Miltín 1934, Animal and Un diamante en el fondo de la tierra [A diamond at the bottom of the Earth].

He also conducted classes and workshops on illustration and literature at fairs and universities in Guadalajara, Mexico City, Boston, Medellín and Lima. Since 2017 he has been a professor of the Diploma in Illustration at the Universidad de Chile and since 2021 he is an Extension professor at the Universidad Católica de Chile.