Meeting with the writer and illustrator Rafael Salmerón. 2016-17

On March 6, Rafael Salmerón, a writer and illustrator of books and posters, visited our school. Salmerón, who has been illustrating children's and young people's books since 1993 and has published more than 25 titles, spoke to them, in a friendly and close way, from his perspective as a writer and as an illustrator.

He introduced the attendees to the fantastic task of an illustrator, which is nothing more than "translating from verbal language to the iconic language of images". He also highlighted the importance of illustrations in a book, highlighting its advantages, such as that they serve to complete it, so that the message is better understood and that it helps to immerse readers in the story and in the identification of characters. However, he also commented that if it is not done well it can cause the opposite effect. Since, as he explained, "how something is said is as important as what is said itself", so we have to adapt the drawings to the narrated story.

Rafael is, as our Secondary students discovered, a very prolific author: he has illustrated more than 70 children's books and with the "Beltrán el erizo" series he begins as a writer.

 He focused on the work "La tejedora de la muerte", by the writer Concha López Narváez, which he has illustrated, read this year in the first cycle of ESO.

The students showed special interest in his works "Noah's kite", "A ball for a bullet" and "27 heartbeats", stories that convey values ​​of dreams and hopes in a real context of today's youth.

He told stories, interacted with the attendees, drew for us and gave us some beautiful drawings. He knew how to convey his passion for writing, with "the one that has full creative freedom".

 In short, it was a very interesting and fun meeting, in which there was time to clarify all the doubts of the students, who actively participated and learned a lot.