Mulhouse. Rabbits, chicks, and baby kangaroos: the Ramdam festival takes center stage on the walls of the maternity ward.

A baby in the distance makes its voice, then calms down, no doubt rocked by its mother's arms. The doors of the 24 rooms for the new mothers at the Diaconat-Fonderie clinic's maternity ward in Mulhouse are closed, preserving privacy and rest. They alternate between bold colors, sometimes purple and sometimes mango, just like the paint pots (adapted to hospital environments) and their brushes placed on the rolling cart.

In the long corridor, three illustrators began working quietly in the morning. The pencil drawings, 24 independent panels, are gradually being covered with paint: a little rabbit in the shower, then in the bath (like the newborns in the maternity ward), carried by the stork, or even a chick on its swing. Mother and baby kangaroos are mango orange, the tips of their noses, tails, and paws are purple. "It's as pretty as anything, it'll cheer up the ward," says Catherine Lehr, a childcare assistant, before entering a patient's room.

Mulhouse resident Jérôme Peyrat and Strasbourg residents Amandine Piu ( Plus gros que le ventre ) and Clothilde Perrin ( À l'intérieur des méchants ) are regulars at the Ramdam book and youth festival . Seven months before the highlight weekend of March 28 and 29, 2026 in Wittenheim, they accepted the invitation from the organizers who propose "a mediation between the book, the child and the parent" throughout the year. This artistic participation is part of their association La Forêt enchantier, and its concept of a shared online fresco, born during one of the Covid 19 lockdowns. Coloring books have since been published and distributed to hospitalized children.

"We didn't want to create a fresco here, but something very light, around birth, in harmony with the whole," explains Jérôme Peyrat, illustrator of Grand Blanc and who has just released a comic strip, Le Peuple de Plume . Artists are more used to working flat in their studio than standing, hand outstretched, in front of a wall. "We'll have to apply three or four layers," notes Amandine Piu, who moves on to the next pencil drawing, between two drying sessions.

The Ramdam festival funded this operation thanks to the Public and Territorial Funds (FPT) project, a financial mechanism of the National Family Allowance Fund (CNAF). "As part of the Ramdam Children's Book Festival's parenting reading projects, we offered the Diaconat maternity ward an album for parents and newborns with a little information on the importance of storytelling from birth. We distributed 120 and 150 small books at the end of 2023 and the end of 2024," recalls Nadia Neher, coordinator. "The creation of illustrations on the walls of the maternity ward corridor is a continuation of the project to highlight the illustrations in the children's albums."

The 28th edition of the Ramdam book and youth festival, "Monsters and Wonders," will take place on the weekend of March 28 and 29 at the Fernand-Anna de Wittenheim site, 2 rue de la Capucine. The numerous reading projects in schools, colleges, after-school programs, daycare centers, and with families in Haut-Rhin begin this September.