Another month is over, so it is time to collect the News of September. I was busy this month and thus not sure if I have seen everything, but here is what I found:
- Hungary issued on 2nd September its annual cartoon souvenir sheet and this year they only revealed the name of the cartoon on issue date. It is called Kukori and Kotkoda, but I doubt that anyone outside Hungary knows this one.
- Double News from Latvia: Tomorrow the stamp about World Tales will be issued and yesterday it was finally revealed which tale will be honoured. It will be the Rundale Castle Rose Ghost, a picture book by Andrejs Viksna and illustrated by Anita Paegle, who had earlier already designed some stamps for Latvia Post. I was not able yet to find out whether this is an actual fairy tale or one invented for the book, but although it find it strange to call a Latvian story a World Tale, this is definitely a cute little issue. Earlier this month the issue plan for 2022 was published and it includes another issue about World Tales. It will be interesting to see whether that one will be a truely worldwide story or another Latvian one.
- Like last year South Korea will honour four picture books for Philately Week on 25th October. The translated names of the books do not lead to any Google results, so I will have to wait until next month when hopefully the English website was updated.
- Also Japan will honour another picture book in its annual series The World of Children's Picture Books. This will already be the fifth issue in the series, which earlier honoured such famous characters as The Little Prince or the Very Hungry Caterpillar. This year's character looks oddly familiar, but it seems that the book was not yet translated. The book is Shirokuma-chan no hotto kaki by Ken Wakayama and deals with a bear and pancakes. The issue date is the 26th November.
- Yesterday the Italian Post finally confirmed (by issuing it) that the Mafalda stamp actually shows the comic by Quino. In addition to the single stamp the issue also includes two labels and honestly the images on the labels are better than the one on the stamp, but nontheless this is a very nice issue.
- Today on the last day of September the Portuguese Post issued the next edition of its series Figuras Mundiais da História e da Cultura (Global Figures of History and Culture). Two stamps were issued showing Jean de La Fontaine and Marcel Proust.
- Also today the images of the German December stamps were revealed, so those of Bibi and Tina and The Three Question Marks. Unfortunately both will get the awful matrixcode like all stamps will get it next year.
- I was just going to write that the Bulgarian issue about Jean de La Fontaine was most likely cancelled, but checked again and saw that it was indeed issued on 23rd September. Like planned and originally announced for July it is a souvenir sheet with one stamp.
This was a month full of New Issues: the Secret Garden from Alderney, Ginger Meggs from Australia, Jean de La Fontaine from Bulgaria, Fairy Tales from France, Feel 100% from Hong Kong, Kukori and Kotkoda from Hungary, Mafalda from Italy, Lord of the Rings from New Zealand, Jean de La Fontaine from Portugal, the Bratislava Biennial of Illustrations from Slovakia and the DC Comics from the United Kingdom. I think that makes September the month with the highest number of issues this year.
To my own collection I have not added so much. Of the New Issues so far I only have the Secret Garden from Alderney and when ordering from Alderney I also bought the Peter Pan souvenir sheet of 2010. I have also ordered and received the Strong Women of Comics from Belgium and Jean de La Fontaine from Monaco, but have not scanned and uploaded those yet. Also I got another Pokemon stamp from Japan on a matching card. I really need to find those in mint condition soon.
