One picture book, two languages: producing “Nosorog i mravi” in Serbian and Russian
“Носорог и мрави. Журкица у трави.” — Nosorog i mravi, “The Rhinoceros and the Ants: A Party in the Grass” — is a rhymed children’s picture book by Svjetlana Stojanović. It’s the story of Mile, a very real rhinoceros whose birthday is tomorrow, and the tiny ants who turn out to be exactly the friends he needs. The Russian edition even carries a subtitle that says it plainly: a tale about true friendship. We took the finished verse and the illustrations and produced the actual book — interior layout, prepress and print — in two languages at once.
The brief
The author arrived with the complete text in verse and a set of finished illustrations, and a goal that made the job interesting: not one book, but two parallel editions — Serbian (in Cyrillic) and Russian — sharing the same illustrated pages. Our part was everything that turns words and pictures into a printed object: the layout, the press-ready files, and the printing itself.
Two languages, one book
A bilingual picture book in verse is a genuine puzzle. Rhyme never translates line-for-line, and the Russian stanzas don’t run to the same length as the Serbian ones — yet both editions had to sit on the same illustrated spreads, so that every picture still matches its verse. We built one page architecture for both languages and then tuned each spread individually: type size, leading and line breaks adjusted per page so the rhythm of the rhyme breathes and the art lines up in both editions.
Laying out a picture book
A picture book is typeset nothing like a novel — here the text is part of the image. We set each stanza into the breathing room of its illustration, kept a generous, child-friendly type size, chose a warm rounded typeface that suits a bedtime read aloud, and protected the characters from clutter. Full-bleed artwork, safe margins to the trim so nothing important is lost to the guillotine, and consistent text placement so a small reader always knows where the words live.
Prepress & print
Then we prepared it for the press — CMYK, correct bleed and trim, and a cover wrap with the spine sized to the exact final page count — and ran the print itself. Paper stock chosen for a picture book, the illustrations colour-proofed so they print as warm on paper as they look on screen, then printed, bound and delivered. The author received finished books, not a folder of PDFs.
- Two parallel interiors — Serbian (Cyrillic) and Russian
- Verse re-fitted per spread so art and rhyme align in both editions
- Press-ready PDF/X interior and cover wrap, spine to page count
- Colour-proofed on picture-book paper stock
- Print run managed end to end — printed, bound, delivered
The result
Two finished editions of the same warm, funny story — one in Serbian, one in Russian — printed and bound from a single set of illustrations and a single, carefully tuned layout. Same pictures, same rhythm, two languages, ready for the shelf.
Have a book like this?
A picture book, a bilingual edition, a print run you’d rather not manage yourself — send us the manuscript and what you need, and we’ll reply with a plan, a fixed quote and a timeline, usually within 24 hours.