This sparrow book is brilliant. Sparrow man Peter Vos (1935-2010) drew the birds his whole life long, working his pencil sketches up at home in fine strokes in pen and watercolour. Designer Karen Polder took the dimensions for this book from Vos’s sketch pad, put them on transparent paper and then followed each leaf with the elaborated illustrations in exactly the same format. The result is more than just the conceit of laying the sketch over its elaboration. In this sturdy format the sparrow poems have an uncommon expanse of paper at their command – the book is, after all, a great deal larger than the average verse collection. Instead of an imbalance, however, this creates a fine tension, thanks in no small measure to the effective typography. The choice of a simultaneously elegant and sturdy sans serif (Bilo Bold Monday, a 2018 design by Pieter van Rosmalen), here set in quite a large body size, echoes the lines of Vos’s drawings and has no difficulty coping with the luxurious expanse of paper. This interplay of toughness and refinement has been pursued through all the decisions in design and materials. The result is a harmonious but never boring book which has also been immaculately printed and bound. A big book for a little bird: a monument to the sparrow.