Balto & Togo
Balto & Togo is a children's nonfiction book about the story of the »Serum Run to Nome« also known as the »Great Race of Mercy«. It tells the true events of the winter of 1925, when in the dead of winter a treacherous disease strikes the small Alaskan town of Nome. Cut off from the outside world, only dog sleds can transport the cure to the remote town. A race over more than 650 miles begins and time is running out. Balto and Togo are the two most famous sled dogs that were part of this heroic rescue. In total about 20 mushers (dog sledders) and more than 150 dogs were involved.
Publisher: Gerstenberg Verlag, Hildesheim
The research
Since the story is well known, there was already some solid research material I could draw on. There are some black-and-white photographs (e.g. of Nome) that I discovered during my image research and that have been incorporated into the illustrations. In addition to large single or double-page illustrations, there are also many small vignettes showing sequences of events or highlighting a detail. The large landscape format of the book suited me well for the layout, it was very suitable for landscape illustrations.
The atmosphere
Experimenting with color atmospheres has been with quite some time. I like to give an illustration an overriding color theme that underscores the content.
In this story many of the events took place at night or in the very long twilight phase that winter in the far north brings. Although accordingly, of course, many shades of blue are found in the color spectrum, I have deliberately varied the colors to create variety.
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