The Pearl

Klara Bartilsson

Deep down at the bottom of the ocean, a small pearl peeks out of its shell. She’s been resting for a whole month, dreaming and growing in the mussel’s warm embrace. Now she can’t wait to stretch her legs in the deep-sea night. But it’s dark and easy to get lost in the endless forest of seaweed. Luckily, someone is looking for her in the dark, someone who’s come from afar and makes the coral reefs shimmer in the deep.
A magical origin story of a pearl’s transformation into the moon.

Klara Bartilsson is an illustrator, visual artist, and pattern designer educated at HDK in Gothenburg. The picture book Mom Is in Trouble (2023), written by Daniel Sjölin, was awarded the Spårhunden prize for the year’s best children’s and young adult crime fiction. Klara Bartilsson’s first solo picture book, The Pine Needle Child, was nominated for the August Prize in 2024.

 

Press voices

“Bartilsson’s books are populated with creatures both colourful and mystical; it’s not unusual that they come with strange, almost dreamlike, absurd facial expressions. They remind of Per Åhlin’s (and Lennart Hellsing’s) ABC figures, but also Anna Höglund’s gallery of people, which often have a weird and almost uncomfortable quality. (..) It is a tender story about the necessity of letting go of the guaranteed and habituated in order to evolve. How much power a meeting with someone can hold, who can show us new, unexpected parts of life. “The Pearl” becomes a story of creation in in two respects. Here, we don’t find red love roses, but a sea, and a soul that wants more.” – Dagens Nyheter

 

Books by Klara Bartilsson