Enchanted Lion Books, 248 Creamer Street, Studio 4, New York, NY (2025)

06/17/2025

How do you draw... a Wanting Monster? In today’s post, illustrator shares how she came up with the visual language for her picture book THE WANTING MONSTER’s titular creature.

“The Wanting Monster evolved over many years. He is the sum of so many stories, experiences and dreams. He has grown from the size of a house to that of a beetle.

In the beginning, when he lived in the shadow play we created, he was the embodiment of grief and darkness, the consumer of all things, devouring and frightful. As the narrative shifted and (author Martine Murray) developed him into the monster you see in our first book, he became an instigator of mayhem and strife, gleeful and unrepentant. After countless iterations, the Wanting Monster evolved into a more complete being, the one you see now in Enchanted Lion’s edition: he was visually almost the same monster as before, but something essential had also changed, and he now had those most human of qualities, sorrow, shame, and vulnerability. He still has the darkness, but also, I think he’s pretty hilarious and relatable.

I have always admired Maurice Sendak, and WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE remains one of my most loved and earliest experiences of literature and the magic of illustration. So perhaps it’s no surprise that Max and his marvellous monster suit surfaced as inspiration. Also surfacing was the possibility that within the Wanting Monster suit, there lived a Max—that every wanting monster has a child, a Max, inside.

My wiry haired Jack Russell, Tintin, with his cunning, impossible naughtiness and greedy ways, also figured as inspiration. He had to show up somewhere, frankly. He’s made his presence felt in every other aspect of my life, so it was inevitable he’d turn up in my first published book.

I am fortunate to have a small, beautiful studio at the back of my garden. Apart from drawing and painting, I work in ceramic. All of my work and the garden I have created feed each other. Everything I make speaks to my love of the natural world. My wish is to communicate this and inspire others. To speak of what we have and what we have to lose. I hope this is what I’ve done with THE WANTING MONSTER.”

06/15/2025

Happy from Enchanted Lion Books! To the ones who give us warmth and love, who play with us and guide us, who raise us and help us grow 💛

Art from two of our 2025 picture books:

🌱I’M LIKE A TREE AND A TREE’S LIKE ME, written by , illustrated by , translated from French by Claudia Zoe Bedrick

🐾ON ALL FOURS, written & illustrated by , translated from French by Emilie Robert Wong

06/13/2025

How did go from the first idea for ON THE MOVE into developing it into a dazzling & informative visual exploration of motion in all its forms?

“Somehow, while waiting for a delayed flight at the airport, watching an anthill of people—each of whom is in a hurry somewhere, moving to their destinations in a rush—the idea arose to create a book about travel, speed, and motion. This idea lived with us for several years; it developed, formed, and fermented. It took time to collect and select information, to crystallize the concept. Over time, we developed it into a more holistic and philosophical exploration of movement, travels, migrations, and so on.

We’ve always been interested in global and timeless topics. We like to interpret and rethink them visually, while building our own philosophy. Working on a new book always has several stages: the idea and development of the concept, the collection and analysis of information, the accumulation of facts and their selection, cutting and polishing all the elements of a story, then… the creation of heroes, narrative lines, connections between elements, etc.

In choosing the visual concept of the book, we relied in many ways on the expressive and bold aesthetics of modern maps and city plans, transport schemes, navigation signs, and infographics. Another important task was to visually depict movement and speed with simple graphic elements, like line and its multiplication. Here we also explored the works of avant-garde artists who worked with dynamics and movement: Fortunato Depero, Umberto Boccioni, Marcel Duchamp, as well as the chronophotographs of the beginning of the 20th century by Etienne-Jules Marais.”

06/12/2025

The College of Education’s list of is here—and SIX of our titles were selected! 👏👏👏

💐Huge congratulations to:

💫🌟 author , illustrator , & translator for their picture book COMET & STAR;

🐸🎶 author & illustrator for their picture book NIGHT SONG;

☀️🌳 author & illustrator for their picture book THERE WAS A SHADOW;

🐻💙 author , illustrator , & translator for their picture book OUT OF THE BLUE;

🧡✨ & translator for their picture book THANK YOU, EVERYTHING;

📖✍️ and last but not least, author , illustrator & designer , & translator for their experimental work blending literary fiction, graphic design, & horror story THE BOOK OF DENIAL (published under Unruly, our imprint of visual narratives for teens & adults).

Our deepest thanks to the Bank Street Children’s Book Committee for this incredible honor! 💛💛💛

“The Children’s Book Committee strives to guide librarians, educators, parents, grandparents, and other interested adults to the best books for children published each year. Titles are chosen by reviewers for literary quality and excellence of presentation as well as the potential emotional impact of the books on young readers. Other criteria include credibility of characterization and plot, authenticity of time and place, age suitability, positive treatment of ethnic and religious differences, and the absence of stereotypes.”

06/10/2025

Announcing... Enchanted Lion’s FALL & WINTER books!!!

Take a sneak peek at our fall/winter titles titles! Here you’ll find original picture books from the likes of The Marginalian creator , award-winning illustrator , and beloved artist , as well as books in translation from some legends of international children’s literature, like from Italy and from Japan.

We’re honored and delighted that —superstar librarian at the Evanston Public Library and the genius behind —featured all nine of our fall/winter 2025–26 titles in an Enchanted Lion/Unruly publisher preview. Thank you, Betsy, for welcoming our forthcoming books with such warmth and insight!

Whether fiction or nonfiction, inspired by science, real life, or Persian poetry, one throughline that glimmers across all these books is their affirmation of the beautiful, deep connection that unites us all as living, breathing beings belonging to the same shared universe—and that whether it’s with family, friends, or place, we’re all seeking something larger with which to commune. We hope you enjoy this sneak peek!

06/09/2025

We’re thrilled to share that of has written about THE GRAMMAR OF FANTASY, which she praises as “dazzling” and “deeply original.” Swipe through for an excerpt of her piece, as well as some images of ’s “enchanting” art ✨✨✨

Written by Gianni Rodari, the father of modern Italian children’s literature, THE GRAMMAR OF FANTASY is one of the great works about the imagination and how stories get made. We’re delighted by the warm reception and reviews our edition of the book has received so far, and we invite all of you, dear readers, to join in the conversation and share your enthusiasm with !

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06/06/2025

Big news: THE WANTING MONSTER is in the !!! Newbery Honoree reviews this timeless and timely picture book that uses the language of fable and fairy tale to weave a powerful tale of envy, mimetic desire, and collective lamentation.

“Beautifully illustrated, THE WANTING MONSTER tells the story of a town... where the titular character sets off a mad race among the townspeople to hoard every natural resource for themselves... The Wanting Monster looks like Maurice Sendak’s Max if he had stayed in the land of the Wild Things and grown into one himself. And as with Max, the key to taming him is showing him a bit of love… From the first page, a palette of pale greens and blues is threatened by dark clouds hovering over the horizon. As the Wanting Monster pours its greed into the ears of the villagers, the darkness pours over the hills and envelops the village, the pages becoming gorgeous studies in blacks and whites and deep blues.” —Newbery honoree Adam Gidwitz, for The New York Times

“Very poetic and deep... The ideas afoot in this book are great.” ―Betsy Bird, (A blog)

“An almost unbearably wonderful modern fable about who we would be and what this world would be like if we finally arrived, exhausted and relieved, at the still point of enough. Having always felt that great children’s books are works of philosophy in disguise, speaking great truth in the language of tenderness, I hold this one among my all-time favorites.” ―, The Marginalian

“This fable teases out the difference between wants and needs and illustrates how excessive desire can lead to heartache. Read’s folkloric art has an ominous quality to it, with skies filled with gray, purple, and black swirls evoking the current climate disaster... An atmospheric musing on the perils of avarice.” ―

“Dreamlike illustrations track this fable about the dangers of envy... Even the stars in the sky fall prey to the Wanting Monster—until a compassionate child reminds the villagers of their responsibility to one another and the world.” ―

Stay tuned for more from author & illustrator !

06/04/2025

In celebration of THE WANTING MONSTER’s publication, author Martine Murray and illustrator Anna Read are taking us behind the scenes into how their picture book was made! Today, author Martine Murray () shares how she first came up with the idea of… the Wanting Monster.

“The first thoughts about the Wanting Monster came to me when my daughter was young. When it was cold in our house, we would get stuck hovering in front of the heater or not wanting to climb out from under the blanket in the morning. Then I would say, ‘The Heater Monster has got us,’ or ‘Now the Bed Monster has got us.’

I started to think of how there are all sorts of monsters inside us from whose clutches it is hard to prise oneself. The Wanting Monster in the story is more psychologically destructive than the Bed Monster, as it magically and monstrously goes about stirring up a competitive acquisitiveness in the hearts of the hapless villagers, which precipitates a plundering of the village commons—even the stars are taken from the sky.

Anna and I met at art school in Melbourne (a very long time ago now), but we both ended up living in a small regional town, where we decided to put on an annual puppet show for the children in our community. After considerable plotting, THE WANTING MONSTER became a puppet show which took place in the garden of our rickety house. It was quite a hit, so Anna and I decided to try it as a book and formed our own very small press to publish it. This was a venture both foolhardy and magnificent, but needless to say, we were thrilled that because of it, the book miraculously wended its way to Enchanted Lion, our favourite press in the world.”

06/01/2025

Today many countries around the world are celebrating 🥳 In honor of this special day, we bring you some of the most brilliant quotes about how children experience the world from ’s THE GRAMMAR OF FANTASY, translated from Italian by & wonderfully illustrated by . Here’s to children & childhood, hope & imagination, mystery & play! 💜

Gianni Rodari is the father of modern Italian children’s literature, who championed the liberating power of the imagination throughout his career as a journalist, educator, & storyteller. THE GRAMMAR OF FANTASY is his guide to creative storytelling with & for children, which is bursting with insights like the ones we shared above—and it’s finally widely available in English!

05/31/2025

The two questions that a traveler hears most often are ‘Where are you going?’ and ‘Where are you from?’ ON THE MOVE: THINGS IN MOTION ON EARTH & BEYOND is a visual and intellectual odyssey in search of answers to these and many other questions. And today, Romana Romanyshyn and Andriy Lesiv—the creators of the picture book—share with us their answer to the second question, taking us behind the scenes into , the art studio in Ukraine from which they created ON THE MOVE.

“We started working on ON THE MOVE shortly before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the bulk of the work was actually completed during the pandemic—when it was impossible to travel abroad, and even leaving the house was forbidden.

Our movements were very limited, and so it was interesting to concentrate our efforts on capturing and thinking about what travel is, what movement is, and what freedom is, which we had taken for granted.

And that’s exactly what ON THE MOVE is all about: reflections on the nature of movement, on its vital need and complete naturalness, on the importance of travel, on various aspects of travel—reflections that are not only practical, but also spiritual and philosophical.

We were inspired by David Attenborough’s nature films. He adheres to a philosophical, poetic approach, and often uses metaphors when talking about nature as a narrator. And we have always read a lot about travel—we’re fascinated by guidebooks and maps.

This book tells about movement and journeys—not only of people, but also of animals, plants, wind, water, and our whole planet. It tells about trips near and far, about trips for fun or for survival, about scientific expeditions and pilgrimages. It’s about migrations, maps, navigation—it’s about finding your own way.”

From its earliest beginnings in a studio in Ukraine, to being read all over the world, we can’t wait to see where ON THE MOVE travels next!

05/15/2025

THIS SATURDAY in the West Village!!! Join in the festivities celebrating books in translation & the NYC community 💛

Enchanted Lion will be tabling at the Sant Jordi Street Fair on Christopher St (halfway between Waverly Pl & Greenwich Ave), from 12-5pm. We hope to see many of you there!

05/14/2025

A little WHIMSY for your Wednesday ☂️ A rainy day can be delightful, especially if you have a cozy book by your side! We’d suggest CHIRRI & CHIRRA, THE RAINY DAY by , an adventurous tale that serves as a reminder that fun can be had no matter the weather.

In this seventh installment of the beloved Chirri & Chirra series, the twins serendipitously happen upon a cafe that is only open on rainy days. In their matching raincoats, they peacefully sip tea with a side of sweet rock candy as they watch the droplets fall, before concluding the day with a beautiful rainbow and the company of their animal friends. Kaya Doi’s illustrations, rendered in glowing colored pencil, are warm and inviting, ushering her readers into pages that feel like a haven from the rain outside. 🍵

Grab your favorite cup of tea and join these two on their forest adventure!

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