The Forest Between Us / Castle

El bosque entre nosotros / Castillo

The Forest Between Us, written by Ave Barrera, is a sequence that tells the adventures of five girls and boys strolling and discovering green spaces in Mexico City. Each double-page spread tells a little about each of these parks, forests, and protected areas, their origins, and their importance.

In their adventure, a gardener guides the path of these five characters, who are joined by a poet—strangely resembling Federico García Lorca—in a creative crisis, who finds answers and inspiration in the natural areas we discover on each page.

As always, I try to include some references and nods to popular culture relevant to the context of the book. In case, the Roma had just been released, and the debate it generated fit well within the local context of the book and its potential adult readers and their families, so a background is inspired by the street, which is almost a character in the film. Other nods are presented only as a joke that can work, such as the famous squirrels of Chapultepec, alluding to Merlin and Arthur in Disney's animated The Sword in the .

Those who live in or have been to Mexico City will recognize the Coyoacán Nursery, the jacaranda trees in bloom, and Chapultepec Park.

I'll leave the description here, in case you want to play and find more interesting things on these pages!

Synopsis from the publisher's site:
While cities often present a dull appearance, lacking space for the kind of vitality that nature provides, they sometimes hide a spirit brimming with flora and fauna, the opposite of their streets and buildings. The protagonists of this book invite us to discover the richness inherent in green areas in cities, and help us rediscover the peace that comes from the shade of a tree.

This is what the first guide looks like, a series of super-simple mini-sketches, just to give me a sense of the flow and possible ideas for each spread. It also helps to stop thinking in terms of individual pages, but rather as a whole space that you can use however works best. The following image is a draft for approval of a spread.