ACHUKA Book of the Day 5 Nov 2025
See also:
Are We There Yet? [ACHUKA Book of the Day 26 May 2023]
“This geometric primer is an immaculately balanced combination of geometric information, “I spy” elements, and interaction. The pale backgrounds and consistently clean lines make the different elements pop, whether depicted in bold, light, or variegated shades. Backmatter notes that the idea for the book originated at the real-life Museum of Concrete Art and Design in Ingolstadt, Germany. A visual treat guaranteed to entrance budding mathematicians.” KIRKUS
Geometry has never been this mesmerising!
Welcome to the Museum of Shapes. Alma is the curator of the museum. She decides which shapes should go where. Triangles have three sides and three angles. Can you help Alma find all the triangles on the shelf? Alma’s favourite shape is a circle. All the points on the edge of a circle are the same distance from its centre. Not all shapes are geometric; some are wiggly and messy. Can you make a wiggly line with your body?
This is an engaging and informative book about the shapes that make up our world. The narrative framework is complemented by interactive texts and gorgeous, minimalist illustration by New York Times Best Illustrated award winner, Sven Volker.
Sven Volker is the author and illustrator of the New York Times award-winning A Million Dots (Cicada, 2019) and the critically acclaimed Are We There Yet? (Cicada, 2023). His minimalist aesthetics have featured on car branding, stage design and art installations. He is a professor at Potsdam University.
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How would you describe your own creative process?Unlike many other picture book artists, I don’t come from drawing and illustration but rather from the idea of the book as a container or frameworks for a visual narrative. I don’t work my way through the book from page to page or from illustration to illustration. And I don’t write the text first and produce the images thereafter. Instead, I always work on all pages of a book at the same time. I add a little here and take something away there. This can sometimes be fast and effortless, but sometimes this takes months. Then I always try to leave out and take away again what is not really necessary. There is a very fine line between “perfectly minimal” and “gone to far” or even boring. I also always imagine how I will read the finished book aloud to a young and critical audience and whether it will then still work and be funny. The worst books are those that look good but in fact are boring. Surprise and discovery are the two main criterias. It is easy to make something look nice, but that is not enough. Honestly that is the most difficult part about making picture books. How did you come up with the idea for The Museum of Shapes?
The Museum of Concrete Art and Design in Ingolstadt approached me with the question of whether I would like to make a picture book on the occasion of their new constructed building. I didn’t have to think twice and immediately said yes. Firstly, because I have always found the idea and history of concrete art fascinating and because I long admire the work of artists such as Max Bill or Anton Stankowski or the concrete poetry of Eugen Gomringer. I find it exciting to look at art from the perspective of geometry, logic and mathematics. I didn’t want to make a book about the history of concrete art or about the artists in this field. Instead, I tried to approach the story from the smallest of all forms – the point. Which is actually not really even a form at all, the point only has a position. From there I moved on to the line, the angle and then arrived at all kind of shapes.
