Ready for a trip into the wilderness? With her new book, Julia Kluge invites you to wondrous adventures in nature. In a tongue-in-cheek style, she presents all sorts of impressions from the lives of brave scouts – from hiking at sunrise and picking delicious berries to camping under the stars. The dreamy and expressive illustrations make familiar flora and fauna seem excitingly alien. No wonder, because after all, a practiced look at nature brings all kinds of amazing things to light. And should life in the wilderness ever get dicey, you can always rely on your fellows.

In “To Be a Brave Scout” the seriousness of the Scout movement, founded at the beginning of the last century, gives way to a timeless fascination for the forms of animals and plants, for a life in and with nature. The atmospheric colors of the book exude a longing for freedom and tempt you to lose yourself while reading.

Es ist Winter und in einem namenlosen Wald hoch im Norden kreuzen sich die Wege einer Katze und eines Habichts. Das kurze Zusammentreffen wird verhängnisvoll für beide sein. Denn auch der Tod, der leise durch die kalte Nacht streift, gesellt sich zu ihnen. „Im Winter” erinnert an eine klassische Tierfabel, doch anstelle einer moralischen Vermittlung tritt eine atmosphärische Verdichtung, die weder erklären noch belehren möchte, sondern den Blick auf das Innenleben der Figuren und ihre Beziehungen untereinander richtet.

It is winter and in a nameless forest in the north, the paths of a cat and a hawk cross. This brief encounter will be fateful for both, as death, who roams silently through the cold night, joins them. “Im Winter“ is reminiscent of a classic animal fable, but instead of a moral mediation, the atmospheric tale focuses on the inner lives of the characters and their inevitable relationship.

Ten days before the beginning of the Second World War in Russia, a five-member family is awakened at night and sent away from home without any explanation. We follow them on their way to the strange place where they will live from now on. “Vasja, Dein Opa” is a story like millions of other stories in the Soviet Union, where almost every second family has personally experienced what gulag and exile mean.

This impressive documentary graphic novel tells the story of Vasja, the grandfather of the author Anna Rakhmanko. It is based on an interview with his little sister Lyubov, with whom he travelled as a child from former Romania (Bukovina) to the distant Arctic Circle region of the Soviet Union, where both had to live with the label “enemy” for many years. For the interview, journalist Anna Rakhmanko traveled to the far north of Russia to talk to Lyubov, the only remaining member of her exiled family, about why her family ended up living so remotely in the middle of nowhere in Siberia. Her words are accompanied by the light and, at the same time, atmospherically dense drawings of her husband, the Danish comic artist Mikkel Sommer.

A part of the proceeds from the book sale will go to support “The Last Address” organization in Russia, which works to raise awareness about those oppressed during the Soviet era (for more information: www.poslednyadres.ru).

Nika, Lotte and Mangold have grown and at the same time are still the same. When they are together, the world always becomes bigger than their small town. Mangold struggles with her chaotic parents, Lotte counts bugs, and for Nika, everything revolves around her music. The new drummer Max causes maximum emotional confusion, not only because of his name, and the three girls and their friends courageously slide from one adventure to the next.

Thomas Wellmann reminds us again how great it is to have companions who are there to dive into life together. There’s always something going on, and if not, these three friends come up with something new and fun. Only standing still makes no sense – except when dreaming.

Do witches exist? Of course, maybe they even have their studio next door.

In her book debut for Rotopol, Malwine Stauss investigates the borderlands between art and alchemy, between the abstract and concrete. Inspired by the spiritual art of the 19th and 20th centuries, the author plays with radiant colors and shapes to outline decisive questions: how does one draw the invisible? Does magic exist? What is inspiration? The gaze into the past becomes a door to the future: the falsely neglected female artists of today have a lot in common with the witches of the past. Both cross borders to find their personal freedom, both are highly in tune with their environment and have a sensibility for the openings in the seemingly consistent order of society.

Beatrice Alemagna is an Italian illustrator and writer. She was born in Bologna in 1973 and studied at the graphic school in Urbino (ISIA). In 1997 she moved to Paris, where she currently lives, and worked as a poster artist for the Center Pompidou for over ten years. Her book “On a Magical Do-Nothing Day” (Harper Collins 2017) is one of the ten best illustrated children’s books of 2017 according to the New York Times and the New York Public Library and was awarded the Golden Medal for Original Art by the Society of Illustrators. Beatrice Alemagna received the Italian Premio Andersen as Illustrator of the Year in 2010 and was nominated four times for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Prize. Beatrice Alemagna has published over 30 books for children that have been translated into numerous languages.
 

Born in Penzberg, Upper Bavaria in 1982. Max Baitinger is drawing comics since his apprenticeship as a carpenter. After that he studied illustration at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig. He is working as a freelance cartoonist, illustrator and animator.

Website: maxbaitinger.tumblr.com

was born in 1990 in London, UK. He attended Brighton University to study Illustration and in his second year started working for the Cartoon Network show “Uncle Grandpa”. In 2014 he won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation (specifically character design on an Uncle Grandpa, “Afraid of the Dark”). Nick moved to Los Angeles in 2016 to continue working for Cartoon Network. Working as a storyboard artist on such shows as: Clarence, Summer Camp Island and Apple & Onion. He lives there still with his partner, Rosie Brand and attempts to make comics in his spare time. Nick is currently working as a Supervising Director on a Cartoon Network show that hasn’t been announced.

Website: instagram.com/nickedwods