CMP Review 2023-10-27

October 27, 2023

Our neighbouring village and previous hometown, St. Pierre Jolys, put out a call to local junior artists (under the age of 18) to submit illustrations for an upcoming picture book being written about St. Pierre’s yearly festival, Frog Follies. The contest organizers have given a list of places and events for which they wanted illustrated submissions.

Serafina submitted a few watercolour drawings. She depicted the library, the bakery, and the museum. My favourite, however, is this fun picture of Queen Elizabeth II. The Queen and her husband visited St. Pierre on July 14 1970, during the first Frog Follies festival, while on a Canadian tour.

The submission rules required that there be no faces in the illustrations. I thought Serafina came up with a clever way to depict the Queen without showing her face.

Here is the Queen, looking at a map of Manitoba, with the village labelled on the southeast corner of the province.

Whether or not any of her illustrations make it into the published picture book, she really enjoyed creating these pieces!

@antonella.f.greco