How many words should we spend on a book without a word in it? This is a book for the eight-to-eighty-eight age bracket; square, with cardboard pages. It consists of twenty-three full spread, full bleed photographs of sheep in farmer Jaap Henke’s North Holland meadow. The subject is safely entrusted to photographer Hans van der Meer, practised as he is in taking photographs of football fields. The text on the back cover warns that counting sheep is more difficult than you think, a point driven home in the very first picture which shows us a sheep with eight feet. But at least the designer gives a helping hand by not cutting off a single sheep. Meanwhile rounded corners and a hollow spine make the book an agreeable object.
It is rare for idea, title, material and execution to be so closely interwoven as here. The panel found it enviable. A great bouncy ball of a book.