My Lymph Nodes Are About 3 Millimeters

Meeting with Madeleine Thoby October 17, 2008, Nantes IUFM

IUFM Conference held in Nantes, in the context of Dating illustrators 2008.

Madeleine Thoby, who is the founder Editions Actes Sud Junior says rapidly developing children's publishing .
In general, historically, we observe first the development of children's books through the Library of pink or green in Hetzel. Then the publisher Hachette will also address this niche. In Flammarion, by creating Father Castor , we will further explore the psychology of the child. Then come
technological developments, with in particular the development of the technique of color, releasing the color in the album. Thus, School Recreation , we note the essort a genuine care for children in the drawing. Great illustrators such as Binette Schroeder and Tomi Ungerer mark the development of children's book and in this evolution, Gallimard youth is no exception.

Concerning the career of Madeleine Thoby , first librarian, she entered the publishing world by selling books, or being a press publishing house before, little little, work to develop youth collections. These experiments have given him a perfect knowledge of the market. Thus, Madeleine Thoby developed Syros, Bayard, and founded Actes Sud Junior.
Show: Martin Roberts, Madeleine Thoby: the soul of Actes Sud Junior , "Les Echos", No. 19118, March 18, 2004, page 18.

Originally from Saint-Nazaire and in his words "very attached to Britain," she recently worked for publishers Nantes Gufstream and Les Editions time.


Concerns Madeleine Thoby revolve around the issue of learning to read child, openness to the world and cultures . And despite the dramatic nature of certain themes of books, often the emphasis is on tenderness and humor. However, she warns: "Some subjects are not affordable for children."

Madeleine Thoby also stresses the constitutive characteristics of children's book:
- Dimension "object" of the book: "Sweet and Hot" for children.
- The children's book should be also adapted ergonomically to the child: for example, the field of vision for a comfortable reading for an adult is 17 cm, while it is only 11 cm for child.
- Avoid body typographical or different choices of fonts unreadable.
- foliate the book, so that children can be spotted.
- The text should always precede the illustration, but the image must not be tautological.

Finally, Madeleine Thoby recalls some truths sound technologies: for example, the fact (related to the books of 16 pages constituting the book), a book must consist of 16, 32, 48, 64 pages, ...