Alex Crumbie’s fifth book. A short story, written in verse, about a sunflower called Selena who suffers from sunburn. As she burns easily, she feels that she cannot do what sunflowers are meant to do: stare at the sun. This thought leads Selena into a state of great sadness, until she encounters a wise moth whose ideas about life and the nature of identity lead Selena to reconsider her purpose.

The book has received some rave reviews:

“A wonderful meditation on the nature of being. An immediate existentialist classic. Parfait!” (J-P Sartre)

My books are written for children, adults, and everyone in between. I believe that the best art and story-telling should have something for everyone, so I aim to incorporate important philosophical ideas and concepts into easily understood tales.

The book itself is A6 size, handmade and printed on recycled paper using vegetable-oil based inks. It has 20 pages and 8 large illustrations.

As the printing is done using a Riso printer, the most ecological form of printing around, colours are printed layer-on-layer, which in some cases can mean some misalignment. I prefer to see such misalignment not as a mistake, but as a quirky stylistic feature. Hopefully you will too.

More about Riso printing…

The soya ink print process uses digital machines called Risographs. This process avoids all the worst aspects of the printing procedure. The ink is soya-based and contains none of the solvents that cause volatile organic emissions. There is no waste ink, no fixers, no wash downs, no disposable aluminium plates. The Risograph printer uses very little energy as there is no heat involved – it is a wet ink process. (This description is taken from MARC the Printers, a members-owned printing social enterprise in Manchester).