Staring Into Space

In March 2020, Claire Garralon developed a ritual for quarantine: drawing the portrait of a primate every day, like a daily photo, their eyes highlighting the fragility of a not-always-flattering moment of frozen expression.

Naturally, she began wanting to make them speak. To give them a voice, ask them questions as if they were people, animate them like creatures of flesh and blood with hearts and souls.

She imagined that these primates were living either among us or in a make-believe land, and that someone—an anthropologist, perhaps—came to see them and ask a single question key to the period we are all living through: What does happiness mean to you?

An author and illustrator living in Toulouse, Claire Garralon published her first picture book in in 2008. Simply and sensitively, she tackles topics as varied as diversity, loneliness, and the environment in her books. She has published Wait for Me! and We’re Off! with À Pas de Loups, and recently, two novels: L.O.L.A. from Actes Sud Junior and Quiet Girl from L’école des Loisirs.