A Dance of the Five Senses: The Artistic Charm and Educational Value of Durai’s Interactive Picture Books

French artist Hervé Tul­let is a pio­neer in the field of con­tem­po­rary pic­ture books. His works have become incred­i­bly pop­u­lar world­wide over the past decade, with count­less fans across the Tai­wan Strait. His audi­ence spans a wide range of ages, from one- and two-year-olds to art enthu­si­asts of all ages. Tul­let has a vast body of work, many of which are high­ly cre­ative and inter­ac­tive, and many have been intro­duced to Chi­na. Here, I will focus on three of his rel­a­tive­ly recent and rep­re­sen­ta­tive works: Oh! Un livre qui fait des sons (2017), The Dance of the Hands (La danse des mains, 2022), and The Hand That Paints (La main qui des­sine, 2024).

Born in Nor­mandy, France in 1958, Dulay grew up in a rel­a­tive­ly impov­er­ished neigh­bor­hood of Paris. He was a mediocre stu­dent for most of his school years until, in his sec­ond year of high school, a French teacher inspired him to become fas­ci­nat­ed with Sur­re­al­ism and begin obses­sive­ly exper­i­ment­ing with auto­mat­ic draw­ing. He dis­liked express­ing him­self through draw­ing, believ­ing it was insuf­fi­cient to express his inner pain. He aban­doned fig­u­ra­tive line draw­ing in favor of non-fig­u­ra­tive scrib­bles. He stud­ied visu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion at the Cen­tral Union School of Art and was recruit­ed by an adver­tis­ing agency as an art direc­tor before grad­u­at­ing.
Like pic­ture book mas­ter Eric Car­le, Dulay ini­tial­ly found suc­cess in adver­tis­ing, but con­stant­ly design­ing pro­mo­tion­al designs for oth­er peo­ple’s prod­ucts left him feel­ing trapped in his artis­tic cre­ativ­i­ty. So, when he became a father in 1992, he decid­ed to leave this lucra­tive pro­fes­sion, not want­i­ng his chil­dren to say, “My dad is in adver­tis­ing.” Dulay’s pre­de­ces­sor, Eric Car­le, had a men­tor­ing edi­tor, Ann Benadus, when he tran­si­tioned to a dif­fer­ent field, and he also had Leo Lion­i­co, who men­tored him. Dulay was also for­tu­nate to meet Fan­ny Marceau, an edi­tor at Hachette, who showed him the lat­est work by Japan­ese artist Kat­su­mi Koma­ga­ta. Dulay lat­er recalled, “It was a shock. … And then, it’s abstrac­tion in a book for chil­dren. This link between child­hood and con­tem­po­rary art: I knew, then, that I want­ed to go there.”

Dulay’s debut pic­ture book, “When Father Meets Moth­er,” pub­lished in 1994, is now avail­able in Chi­nese, but his tru­ly world-shak­ing mas­ter­piece was “Dot Dot Dot,” pub­lished in 2010. Over the decade pri­or to that, he had explored a vari­ety of sub­jects, includ­ing art, inter­ac­tiv­i­ty, games, and the five senses—all very cre­ative, but none as aston­ish­ing as this one. Even before its block­buster suc­cess, he knew it was the pin­na­cle of his artis­tic endeav­ors. At the 2010 Bologna Book Fair, the booth of French pub­lish­er Bayard was thronged with for­eign edi­tors vying for copy­rights, includ­ing at least nine from the Unit­ed States.

French pic­ture book crit­ic Sophie van der Lin­den com­ment­ed on Dot Dot: “Its nar­ra­tive inter­ac­tive prin­ci­ple was per­fect­ly in place, and he touched the nerve cen­ter of child­hood: the absolute belief in a mag­i­cal world.”

Leonard Mar­cus, an Amer­i­can chil­dren’s book his­to­ri­an, lament­ed: “​It is hard not to see the phe­nom­e­nal world­wide pop­u­lar­i­ty of Press Here as some sort of sly tri­umph over the dig­i­ti­za­tion of every­thing. As Hervé Tul­let has so beau­ti­ful­ly demon­strat­ed, no bat­ter­ies or cost­ly devices are required for mean­ing­ful inter­ac­tiv­i­ty: only the meet­ing of one play­ful imag­i­na­tion with anoth­er.”

Although there have been many inter­ac­tive pic­ture books for young read­ers before this, none seem to have required such a high lev­el of read­er involve­ment, nor have read­ers been so will­ing to coop­er­ate and will­ing to play again and again. This is large­ly due to the pop­u­lar­i­ty of elec­tron­ic media. Tablets such as the iPad have made many babies addict­ed to inter­act­ing with elec­tron­ic screens, and the “Dot Dot” book, which does not require plug­ging in elec­tric­i­ty, seems to have suc­cess­ful­ly regained the com­mand­ing heights of chil­dren’s read­ing.

“Dot Dot” itself lacks a sto­ry­line. It begins with a sin­gle yel­low dot, and turn­ing the pages depends entire­ly on the read­er’s abil­i­ty to fol­low the instruc­tions in the book. Young read­ers, of course, will need an adult to read aloud to them. From a pure­ly for­mal per­spec­tive, the book ini­tial­ly resem­bles a remake of Leo Lion­ni’s “Lit­tle Blue and Lit­tle Yel­low.” Dulay him­self read­i­ly admits, “I had in mind to make the Lit­tle Blue and Lit­tle Yel­low of the 21st cen­tu­ry, but not at all to match its suc­cess.”

In fact, the suc­cess of “Dot Dot” was aston­ish­ing. In the 12 years since its pub­li­ca­tion, it has been trans­lat­ed into 35 lan­guages.

Pub­lished in 2017, “Talk­ing Dot Dot” can be con­sid­ered a sequel to “Dot Dot.” How­ev­er, in a sense, most of Dulai’s works pub­lished after 2010 can be con­sid­ered sequels, as they all adhere to rel­a­tive­ly mature cre­ative meth­ods and con­cepts, inter­act­ing with read­ers through var­i­ous visu­al games. How­ev­er, in terms of for­mal sim­i­lar­i­ty, “Change Change Change,” “Dot Dot Adven­ture,” “Talk­ing Dot Dot,” and “Draw­ing Dot Dot” are more like sequels.

Dulay’s cre­ative approach is deeply influ­enced by impro­vi­sa­tion and inter­ac­tive art. He excels at uti­liz­ing sim­ple geo­met­ric shapes and basic col­ors, such as the pri­ma­ry col­ors red, yel­low, and blue, often against his sig­na­ture white back­ground, to cre­ate imag­i­na­tive visu­als. How­ev­er, unlike “Dot Dot Dot,” “Talk­ing Dot Dot Dot” incor­po­rates the inter­ac­tion of sound: read­ers are asked to make dif­fer­ent sounds, such as “oh,” “ah,” and “wow,” based on the shape and col­or. The size of the shape also caus­es vari­a­tions in the vol­ume of the sound, and even the dis­tance and den­si­ty between the shapes can affect the sound. When spo­ken togeth­er, the tones fluc­tu­ate and the rhyth­mic feel shifts. Some­times it feels like a con­ver­sa­tion, some­times it can be bois­ter­ous, and some­times it feels like singing. Over­all, it feels very much like a play!

Dulai is a mul­ti­tal­ent­ed artist. He’s not only a writer and visu­al artist, but also a skilled speak­er and per­former, mak­ing him a pop­u­lar cre­ative instruc­tor for art work­shops. In “Talk­ing Dots,” he incor­po­rates ele­ments of the­atri­cal per­for­mance. Think of the book as a play­ful chil­dren’s play, with seem­ing­ly non­sen­si­cal yet hilar­i­ous dot char­ac­ters appear­ing one after anoth­er. “Oh,” “Ah,” and “Wow” are demon­stra­tion lines. Read­ers can play around with the script first, then grad­u­al­ly add their own unique expres­sions as they mas­ter the tech­nique.

As ear­ly as 2003, Dulay was inspired to write a book almost impro­vised, Five Sens­es (also avail­able in Chi­nese), a book that excit­ed him great­ly. “I pro­duced with­out think­ing, I lib­er­at­ed my sens­es because I lib­er­at­ed my style, I felt some­thing foun­da­tion­al and expressed it straight­away, as it came, And that lib­er­at­ed my ges­ture.”

One can imag­ine how much the artist longs to share this feel­ing of free­dom and lib­er­a­tion of the five sens­es with read­ers, even if it is just a baby of one or two years old.
In fact, babies as young as one or two years old can do even bet­ter, as they nat­u­ral­ly per­ceive the world using all five sens­es almost simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. In this sense, Dulay isn’t so much try­ing to teach babies how to do things as being inspired by them, com­mu­ni­cat­ing with them and pay­ing trib­ute to them through this work. “Talk­ing Dot Dot” is the kind of work that requires the read­er to unleash all of their sens­es to ful­ly appre­ci­ate it. Don’t you want to give it a try?

“The Dance of the Hands” (La danse des mains), pub­lished in 2022, fur­ther demon­strates Durai’s reflec­tions on the inte­gra­tion of move­ment and art. The book guides chil­dren to dance with their hands. As the pages unfold, their hands dance, twirl, and roll across the page, grad­u­al­ly releas­ing the move­ments, as if per­form­ing a “dance per­for­mance” of their hands. This book is more than just read­ing mate­r­i­al; it is an artis­tic expres­sion of the body. In fact, inter­est­ed read­ers can also find the French chil­dren’s song of the same name online, “La danse des mains,” which is the music that French teach­ers use to teach chil­dren the hand-wav­ing dance. Of course, Durai also aims to allow young read­ers to expe­ri­ence the joy of par­tic­i­pat­ing in artis­tic cre­ation. The book’s vibrant and vibrant back­grounds serve as a stage for read­ers to freely express them­selves.

Through this cre­ative form, Dulai helps chil­dren devel­op fine motor skills and hand-eye coor­di­na­tion, while guid­ing them to express their emo­tions and thoughts through move­ment. Hands are one of the most fre­quent­ly used body parts, and Dulai inte­grates art into chil­dren’s dai­ly lives through the move­ment of their hands, allow­ing them to dis­cov­er the beau­ty of art through the “dance of their hands” and active­ly par­tic­i­pate in the cre­ation of beau­ty.

For adult read­ers, this book also reminds us to rethink the con­nec­tion between body move­ment and cre­ativ­i­ty. We often ignore the expres­sion of the body, and through this form, Dulay makes us real­ize that move­ment itself is also an artis­tic expres­sion, there­by inspir­ing us to redis­cov­er our cre­ativ­i­ty.

“The Hand That Can Draw” (La main qui des­sine), Dulay’s lat­est work, released in 2024, con­tin­ues his con­sis­tent inter­ac­tive style. This book encour­ages chil­dren to cre­ate by guid­ing their hands on the page, step by step, until they com­plete a poster. In this way, Dulay teach­es chil­dren that the hand is not just a tool but a source of cre­ativ­i­ty, capa­ble of cre­at­ing end­less artis­tic pos­si­bil­i­ties through sim­ple move­ments and lines.

This book is par­tic­u­lar­ly suit­able for younger chil­dren as an intro­duc­tion to art cre­ation. Through sim­ple steps and guid­ance, it grad­u­al­ly cul­ti­vates chil­dren’s hands-on skills and self-con­fi­dence. For chil­dren, being able to com­plete a paint­ing inde­pen­dent­ly not only enhances their self-aware­ness but also strength­ens their inter­est in art and their desire to explore. This book shows them that cre­at­ing art does not require com­plex tools and tech­niques; the hands are the best artis­tic tool.

This book is also inspir­ing for adult read­ers. While adults often hes­i­tate to cre­ate for fear of imper­fect results, Dulay, through the sim­ple process of hand-draw­ing, reminds us that the beau­ty of art lies not in per­fec­tion but in the self-expres­sion and explo­ration that occurs dur­ing the process. This sim­ple cre­ative method can help adult read­ers redis­cov­er their child­hood cre­ativ­i­ty and unleash their inner artis­tic poten­tial.

Tul­let’s vibrant and cre­ative inter­ac­tive pic­ture books have been a world­wide hit. How­ev­er, Amer­i­can art cura­tor and crit­ic Aaron Ott warns that “Tul­let’s suc­cess and pop­u­lar­i­ty as a chil­dren’s book author has at times masked the actu­al depth of his pro­duc­tion. …. At once patron­iz­ing and pejo­ra­tive, this label dis­re­gards the art his­tor­i­cal impact of “untrained” artists, like those who direct­ly influ­enced Art Brut, but also rad­i­cal­ly under­es­ti­mates the inher­ent val­ue found in the cre­ative free­dom of a child’s mind­set.”

In fact, Dulay’s art is not lim­it­ed to chil­dren. His basic propo­si­tion can be sum­ma­rized as the lib­er­a­tion of cre­ativ­i­ty and the impor­tance of process over results. He believes thatArtis­tic cre­ation should not be con­strained by any form of rules or estab­lished stan­dards, but should be a free and spon­ta­neous expres­sion.He advo­cates for inspir­ing cre­ativ­i­ty through sim­ple forms, col­ors, and inter­ac­tions, and encour­ages every­one, chil­dren and adults, to find their own voice and expres­sion in art.

The inter­ac­tiv­i­ty of pic­ture books, the sim­plic­i­ty of visu­als and text (leav­ing more space for read­ers to par­tic­i­pate), stim­u­late read­ers’ cre­ativ­i­tyThis can be seen as a nat­ur­al exten­sion of Durai’s artis­tic vision into the realm of pic­ture book cre­ation, or per­haps a col­lab­o­ra­tion with one of human­i­ty’s most cre­ative groups: chil­dren. How­ev­er, I must empha­size that this in no way dimin­ish­es the inher­ent (and not inten­tion­al) edu­ca­tion­al val­ue of his work. Over the years, edu­ca­tion­al experts and par­ents have expe­ri­enced at least the fol­low­ing edu­ca­tion­al ben­e­fits from Durai’s inter­ac­tive pic­ture books:

1. Enhance con­cen­tra­tion and sense of par­tic­i­pa­tion;
2. Pro­mote sen­so­ry coor­di­na­tion and hands-on abil­i­ty;
3. Cul­ti­vate lan­guage and expres­sion skills;
4. Enhance log­i­cal think­ing and cog­ni­tion of cause and effect;
5. Spa­tial per­cep­tion and math­e­mat­i­cal cog­ni­tion;
6. Encour­age inde­pen­dent read­ing and explo­ration…

In this era of per­va­sive elec­tron­ic media, Dulay’s inter­ac­tive pic­ture books con­tin­ue to offer a pow­er­ful form of resis­tance, a tena­cious resis­tance. Their suc­cess­ful resis­tance mech­a­nism is based on at least the fol­low­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics:

1. Pro­mote par­ent-child inter­ac­tion and shared read­ing expe­ri­ence;
2. Reduce screen time and pro­tect eye­sight;
3. Enhance touch and real inter­ac­tion;
4. Encour­age focused and in-depth read­ing;
5. Reduce depen­dence on exter­nal inter­fer­ence;
6. Pro­mote imag­i­na­tion and cre­ativ­i­ty;
7. No bat­tery depen­den­cy, read any­time, any­where;
8. Cul­ti­vate a love for print­ed books…

——In order to avoid writ­ing a bor­ing paper, I will not elab­o­rate on this.

To expe­ri­ence the beau­ty of life is to cre­ate hap­pi­ly.Shar­ing these fas­ci­nat­ing books with chil­dren, let­ting them explore them through their five sens­es, expe­ri­enc­ing them freely and unknow­ing­ly, and par­tic­i­pat­ing in cre­ation through play—I think this is Hervé Dulay’s most allur­ing invi­ta­tion.

Argen­tine Primera División writ­ten on Sep­tem­ber 15, 2024 in Bei­jing