This is completely loopy. In fact, it is more than a little silly, as well as very funny and completely romantic.
Gus & Waldo is a series of small-sized books telling the story of two (male) penguins in love, by Italian author Massimo Fenati. Three books have already been published by Orion Books UK: Gus & Waldo’s Book of Love (2006), Gus & Waldo’s Book of Fame (2007) and Gus & Waldo’s Book of Sex (2008).
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In the Book of Love, two lonely penguins spend their days unable to enjoy themselves, until they meet each other and, of course, instantly fall madly, deeply in love. But even the path to true love has its bumps…
The second story sees Gus and Waldo attain world-wide fame, with the attendant wealth and ego-boost. But fame has a price, and privacy is its first victim…
Finally, in the Book of Sex, Gus and Waldo’s varied sex life eventually hits a snag, and they’ll have to search high and low for the remedy to their plight.
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Each of those three 96-page books is structured the same way: the two lovers finds themselves facing a distinct problem, but of course, things end up even better than they started. Massimo Fenati uses a lot of the characteristics of children’s books, in tone as well as in presentation, for what could be called a fairytale for adults.
His art is simple and clean, and the pages are often filled with little details, such as parodies of well-known brands or titles, all dressed in bright colors. And there’s one sentence per page, for one full-page illustration, another characteristic of children’s books. The publisher has also done a good job: those almost square little hardcovers (around 5.5 in) are printed on thick paper, with a sturdy spine that enables the reader to open them flat.
Humor also plays a big part in the charming atmosphere of the books, as you can see from the excerpts above.
You can see more pages from the books at the author’s site, and you can find the books at Amazon
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