As the name suggests, crossbills have a crossed beak so they can crush pine cones and feed off the pine kernels inside. Pelicans instead use their big bucket beak to scoop up the fish and swallow them whole for a quick snack. The endless different shapes and sizes of beaks are determined by what they eat, how they eat it, the natural environment and the species they belong to.
Oscar Bolton Green’s clear-cut line drawings and brilliant colours explain the many different variations with the same simplicity as the accompanying text. His immediate, essential style, with its patches of colour and clarity of line, shows how tiny hummingbirds stretch into the flowers to draw out the nectar and how graceful flamingo dips its spoon-shaped beak beneath the surface of the water.
Bird Beak Book is the new and 11th title in the collection “22”. From an idea of the historical collection “Tantibambini”, directed by Bruno Munari for Einaudi from 1972 to 1978, collection “22” is a publishing project dedicated to children’s books that features historical masters like Bruno Munari, Pino Tovaglia and Giancarlo Iliprandi, important authors like Davide Longo and Chiara Carrer as well as young talented illustrators such as Katrin Stangl, Alessandro Sanna and Oscar Bolton Green.
Oscar Bolton Green (London, 1988) graduated from Camberwell College of Arts and is now an illustrator based in London.