Daniel Kondo

Daniel Kondo is a Brazilian author, illustrator, and book designer based in Punta del Este, Uruguay. For more than two decades, he has created picturebooks in which words, images, typography, page turns, format, paper, and binding all take part in the storytelling.

For Kondo, the book is a language in its own right. In Big Bad Wolf with a Toothache, for example, the physical object becomes part of the story itself. In other projects, he transforms songs by artists such as Gilberto Gil and Djavan into visual narratives, exploring how rhythm, memory, and sound can take shape on the page.

His work moves between literature, music, poetry, illustration, and editorial design, often returning to childhood, humor, Brazilian culture, and the relationship between people and the natural world.

Kondo received Brazil’s Jabuti Prize and a New Horizons Special Mention at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair. His books have also been recognized by the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, the World Illustration Awards, Communication Arts, the Society of Illustrators in New York, and the UNESCO Chair in Reading at PUC-Rio.

For him, a picturebook is read with the eyes, the hands, and the entire experience of turning its pages.