Introduction to the German Contemporary Children’s Book Illustration Exhibition, Exhibits and Illustrators

【Exhi­bi­tion Intro­duc­tion】
The col­or­ful world of elves, mon­sters, ghosts and ani­mals…
——Con­tem­po­rary Ger­man Chil­dren’s Book Illus­tra­tion Exhi­bi­tion

      
The “Con­tem­po­rary Ger­man Chil­dren’s Book Illus­tra­tions Exhi­bi­tion” show­cas­es the works of 13 of Ger­many’s lead­ing illus­tra­tors, show­cas­ing the high lev­el of cur­rent illus­tra­tion prac­tice and the diverse range of styles. The exhi­bi­tion show­cas­es works by inter­na­tion­al­ly renowned award-win­ning artists, as well as emerg­ing tal­ent. Some works are specif­i­cal­ly designed for chil­dren, while oth­ers are aimed at a wider audi­ence, ensur­ing a wide range of inter­ests.

       
Illus­tra­tion is “end­less fun.” While the most accu­rate depic­tion of the orig­i­nal text and real­i­ty is the out­ward form of illus­tra­tion, cre­ativ­i­ty, inde­pen­dence, and a child’s unique expe­ri­ence of the world are the true essence of this art form. “Through a wealth of poet­ic and sur­re­al images, chil­dren have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to see the world through their own eyes. Illus­tra­tion encour­ages us to express the world rather than to imi­tate it real­is­ti­cal­ly.”

       
Explor­ing the world through pic­ture books? Artis­tic illus­tra­tions have become more com­plex and diverse over time. Today’s pic­ture books rarely depict chil­dren’s dai­ly lives, but instead offer poet­ic, cre­ative, sur­re­al, and even absurd images, giv­ing chil­dren the oppor­tu­ni­ty to devel­op their own per­spec­tives on the world.

       
Pic­ture books are not nec­es­sar­i­ly “A for apple, B for
“boy”; can embody­ing chil­dren’s fears in paint­ings make them more inde­pen­dent? Live­ly and engag­ing bed­time sto­ries can help chil­dren drift off to sleep with a smile… In Ger­many and many oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries, pic­ture books are high­ly val­ued, and read­ing with chil­dren is a dai­ly rou­tine. There­fore, many illus­tra­tors’ works not only pique the inter­est of chil­dren but also attract adults, spark­ing parental inter­est first and then the chil­dren’s.

       
For exam­ple, Wolf Elbruch, one of the top con­tem­po­rary Ger­man illus­tra­tors, was on dis­play for Carl Philipp Moritz’s “Learn ABC with Me”
The illus­tra­tions in this ABC book, using draw­ing and col­lage tech­niques, give the Eng­lish alpha­bet a mod­ern feel. The first pic­ture in this ABC book isn’t the usu­al intro­duc­tion to words begin­ning with “A.” Instead, it depicts “the eye with which we observe pic­tures” (Ger­man: Auge), an oval eye col­laged against a green can­vas back­ground. A boy stands before it with his back to the read­er. The author encour­ages read­ers to “observe care­ful­ly, use their minds, make con­nec­tions, and pay atten­tion to the mes­sage beyond the pic­ture.” Illus­tra­tions no longer sim­ply serve to com­ple­ment the text; they them­selves tell sto­ries. Beyond con­vey­ing the sto­ry’s mes­sage, they also inspire the read­er’s imag­i­na­tion, obser­va­tion, inde­pen­dent think­ing, and appre­ci­a­tion of visu­al art and beau­ty.

       
The shapes are live­ly and inter­est­ing. For exam­ple, the works of Jut­ta Bauer and Rotraut Susan­na Bernard in the exhi­bi­tion are rich in con­tent in them­selves and can be savored care­ful­ly. Jut­ta’s illus­tra­tions for “Why We Live Out­side the City” use a grace­ful and poet­ic style to depict the won­der­ful jour­ney of a large fam­i­ly in search of a home. The author clear­ly stat­ed that the char­ac­ters in the paint­ing are sec­ondary, and the atmos­phere and envi­ron­ment are the most impor­tant. As for Rotraut Susan­na’s illus­tra­tions, they are even more rich in imagery and full of fan­ta­sy, giv­ing full play to wild imag­i­na­tion, such as cats with maps, shoes that serve as space­ships, fish-shaped pools, and hous­es with hearts, brains, and ears that can walk. “In the world of illus­tra­tion, every­thing becomes pos­si­ble. Illus­tra­tors open up anoth­er world for read­ers.”

       
Some illus­tra­tors have even explored chil­dren’s fears as their themes. For exam­ple, young illus­tra­tor Jack­ie Gra­cie uses “night­mares” as her theme, employ­ing bold lines and intense col­ors to depict haunt­ing dreams, where ghost­ly fig­ures appear and dis­ap­pear. The sto­ry depicts a child in her room at night who sees ter­ri­fy­ing images. She wants to find her par­ents but dares not leave the bed, so she clings to her toy duck. The duck even­tu­al­ly “scares” the shad­ows away, reveal­ing that the ter­ri­fy­ing images are actu­al­ly the shad­ows of trees. West­ern child edu­ca­tion empha­sizes fos­ter­ing inde­pen­dence and the abil­i­ty to solve prob­lems on her own. By direct­ly depict­ing chil­dren’s fears, illus­tra­tors can help chil­dren con­front their fears, ulti­mate­ly allow­ing them to dis­si­pate.

       
Many bed­time sto­ries are writ­ten at a slow pace to lull chil­dren to sleep, but illus­tra­tor Nadia Budd believes that bed­time sto­ries can be engag­ing and live­ly, pro­vok­ing laugh­ter and send­ing chil­dren into a bliss­ful dream­land. There­fore, her works fea­ture a vari­ety of ani­mals, play­ful fig­ures, and rhyming text, imbued with humor.

       
There’s also an illus­tra­tion by Arthur Schef­fler, a col­lab­o­ra­tion with a British author. Through the lens of a giant enter­ing Lil­liput, this heart­warm­ing sto­ry tells the sto­ry of giv­ing and help­ing oth­ers as the foun­da­tion of hap­pi­ness. This work has been trans­lat­ed into mul­ti­ple lan­guages and pub­lished world­wide. Mean­while, vet­er­an Ger­man illus­tra­tor Klaus Ensickart’s “A Pony’s Christ­mas” uses clas­sic paint­ing tech­niques to depict the sto­ry of a pony and his fam­i­ly.

       
This Ger­man Chil­dren’s Book Illus­tra­tion Exhi­bi­tion is a world tour that began in 2006. With­in Greater Chi­na, it has already been shown in Hong Kong, Tai­wan, and Ulaan­baatar, and will be shipped to main­land Chi­na in ear­ly March. It began in Guangzhou in ear­ly April and will con­tin­ue to Chang­sha in ear­ly April. The Bei­jing stop will be held at the Cen­tral Acad­e­my of Fine Arts from April 16th to 25th. While Guangzhou and Chang­sha only fea­ture 13 illus­tra­tors, Bei­jing will also fea­ture an addi­tion­al exhi­bi­tion by renowned Ger­man chil­dren’s book author Kirsten
In con­junc­tion with the exhi­bi­tion, we plan to invite Ger­man experts, writ­ers, illus­tra­tors, etc. to hold a series of reports and talk shows, which will be open to chil­dren’s read­ing pro­mo­tion orga­ni­za­tions, chil­dren’s book writ­ers, illus­tra­tors, illus­tra­tion stu­dents and teach­ers, pub­lish­ers and oth­er indus­try pro­fes­sion­als as well as the inter­est­ed pub­lic and media.
Pro­fes­sor Dankert, writer Kirsten Boie (April 16–17) and illus­tra­tor Nadia Bud­de were invit­ed to Chi­na.
 
 
【Exhib­it Intro­duc­tion】
 
Jut­ta Bauer on Why We Live Out­side the City
Jut­ta BAUER on “Warum wir vor der Stadt wohnen”
(Why We Live Out­side the Town)
Gouache, col­ored pen­cils
2005, Beltz & Gel­berg

…I real­ly don’t know where to start! I chose this book because it’s my newest work and I’ve worked so hard on it…so at least I want peo­ple to read it! I think Peter
Stam­m’s writ­ing was so good that I took on this project four years ago. How­ev­er, illus­trat­ing this sto­ry was no easy task. The char­ac­ters (child, moth­er, father, and grand­par­ents) were sec­ondary; the atmos­phere, the set­ting, and the objects described were para­mount. For me, it was quite the oppo­site. I lat­er learned that the man­u­script had passed through sev­er­al hands, and every­one con­sid­ered it “impos­si­ble” to illus­trate. It took me three years to com­plete the project, and dur­ing that time I had more than one thought: “I can’t do it any­more,” and I would set it aside to focus on oth­er projects. In the end, I still could­n’t decide whether I had made the right deci­sion. Per­haps that’s the real rea­son I chose this work…
 
Jut­ta Ball
Jut­ta BAUER

•    
1955: Born in Ham­burg

•    
1975–1981: Stud­ied illus­tra­tion at the Ham­burg Uni­ver­si­ty of Fine Arts under Pro­fes­sor Siegfried Oelke

•    
1981: Start­ed pub­lish­ing illus­trat­ed books and draw­ing car­toons for mag­a­zines and peri­od­i­cals

•    
1985–1992: Worked as a car­toon­ist for the wom­en’s mag­a­zine “Brigitte”

•    
1985: “Got­tfried, das fliegende Schwein” wins third prize in the Trois­dorf Pic­ture Book Award

•    
1991: Start­ed draw­ing for car­toons

•    
1994: “Ein und alles” won the IBBY Award (Inter­na­tion­al Board on Books for Young Peo­ple)

•    
1998: “Die Köni­gin der Far­ben” won the first prize of the Trois­dorf Pic­ture Book Award, “Luchs

      
              
Award (award­ed by “Zeit”) and “Most Beau­ti­ful Ger­man Book” Award (award­ed by “Book Art Foun­da­tion”)

•    
1999: Win­ner of the North Rhine-West­phalia Chil­dren’s Pic­ture Book Award

•    
2001: “Schreimut­ter” won the Ger­man Youth Lit­er­a­ture Award

•    
2002: “Opas Engel” won the Catholic Chil­dren’s and Youth Lit­er­a­ture Award

•    
2003: Solo exhi­bi­tion at the Pic­ture Book Muse­um in Trois­dorf

•    
Cur­rent­ly lives in Ham­burg
 
Com­men­tary by Rotraut Suzanne Bernard Mom, Dad, Me and Her
Rotraut Susanne BERNER on “Mut­ter, Vater, ich und sie”
(Moth­er, Father, Me and Her)
Chalk, char­coal
2001, Beltz & Gel­berg
See Jürg
Schu­biger’s writ­ing feels like a famil­iar expe­ri­ence. I say this because, while read­ing, its con­tents have made me think like a spring, and all kinds of images and cre­ative ideas are about to emerge. The text is sim­ple, yet pro­found; it touch­es your feel­ings from dif­fer­ent angles, with a touch of melan­choly in its play­ful­ness, del­i­cate yet reserved; seem­ing­ly unre­strained, but actu­al­ly cau­tious and thought­ful; all these qual­i­ties form the per­fect foun­da­tion for my paint­ing.

       
“Mom, Dad, Me, and Her” is a boy’s diary, chron­i­cling his dai­ly life and fan­tasies, record­ed in a casu­al and unpre­dictable order. The nar­ra­tive is sim­ple and plain, yet a sim­ple philo­soph­i­cal thought emerges between the lines. Based on this, I have extract­ed sim­ple, apho­ris­tic phras­es and “inter­po­lat­ed” them through­out the art­work.

       
Illus­tra­tors rarely have such free­dom to work with orig­i­nal texts, and achiev­ing this kind of mas­ter­piece is tru­ly a dream come true. For this exhi­bi­tion, I have select­ed five works to add a new per­spec­tive to the orig­i­nal text, but the orig­i­nal text is already rich in artis­tic con­cep­tion.

       
In addi­tion, the edit­ing and pub­lish­ing of this book took an almost “lux­u­ri­ous” amount of time, tak­ing care of many details, which is enough to pub­lish mul­ti­ple books. This also pro­vid­ed con­sid­er­able sup­port for my cre­ation.
 
Rotraut Suzanne Bernard
Rotraut Susanne BERNER

•    
1948: Born in Stuttgart

•    
Stud­ied graph­ic design at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences in Munich

•    
1977: Became a free­lance artist

•    
1984: “Son­ntagskind” won the Ger­man Youth Lit­er­a­ture Award

•    
1996: “Als die Welt noch jung war” won the Ger­man Youth Lit­er­a­ture Award

•    
1998: “Bloße Hände” wins the Ger­man Youth Lit­er­a­ture Award

•    
Nom­i­nat­ed three times for the Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen Illus­tra­tion Award

•    
2000: “Die Prinzessin kommt um vier” won the Schn­abel­ste­herpreis Prize and the Troy
Sec­ond Prize of the Dorf Pic­ture Book Award

•    
Cur­rent­ly lives in Munich
 


Nadia Bud­de Fins, Leather, and Down[Trans­la­tion]
Nadia BUDDE on “Flosse, Fell und
Feder­bett 
(Fin, Fur and Feath­er Bed)
Screen print­ing
2004, Peter Ham­mer Pub­lish­ing

For this exhi­bi­tion of con­tem­po­rary pic­ture book illus­tra­tions in Ger­many, I have select­ed five works from the book “Fins, Leather, and Down.” The main rea­son for choos­ing this book is that it is the “youngest” of all my pub­lished books to date. “Fins, Leather, and Down” is intend­ed as a bed­time book. Its fast-paced sto­ry intro­duces chil­dren to numer­ous char­ac­ters and ani­mals, along with a vari­ety of rhymes and set­tings, to lull them to sleep. This basic con­cept is sim­i­lar to the hyp­not­ic method used in count­ing sheep. How­ev­er, work­shop test­ing and the chil­dren’s respons­es revealed that this book has many func­tions except for its “hyp­not­ic” effect. For me, this is fur­ther rea­son to sub­mit this “con­tem­po­rary” book. Haven’t the orga­niz­ers repeat­ed­ly remind­ed us to reflect the lat­est trends in pic­ture books? Among oth­er things, this book offers a new way to enter­tain and edu­cate, teach­ing chil­dren what they need to learn with­out the con­stant pres­sure of per­sua­sion and per­sua­sion. This way, chil­dren will fall asleep. We no longer need to invent sto­ries about moon fairies bring­ing good dreams or demons in the dark see­ing chil­dren who don’t sleep. Well, now we have a bright hard­cov­er sto­ry­book, full of famil­iar and not-so-famil­iar crit­ters from the ani­mal king­dom, ready to read to your kids as they wait for bed—hopefully with or with­out cock­roach­es crawl­ing under their beds. Let the live­ly, engag­ing sto­ries lull them to sleep!
 
Nadya Bud­de
Nadia BUDDE

•    
1967: Born in Berlin

•    
Trained as a com­mer­cial illus­tra­tor

•    
1993–2000: Stud­ied Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Design at the Weis­sensee Acad­e­my of Arts in Berlin and the Roy­al Col­lege of Art in Lon­don

•    
2000: “Eins Zwei Drei Tier” won the Ger­man Youth Lit­er­a­ture Award and the Old­en­burg Chil­dren’s and Youth Lit­er­a­ture Award

•    
2000: “Trau­riger Tiger toast­et Tomat­en” won the sec­ond prize of the Trois­dorf Pic­ture Book Award

•    
2002: Schn­abel­ste­herpreis Award for “Kurz nach sechs kommt die Echs”

•    
Cur­rent­ly lives in Berlin
 
Claus Ensikat reviews A Lit­tle Pony Christ­mas[Trans­la­tion]
Klaus ENSIKAT on “Pony­wei­h­nacht”
(Pony Christ­mas)
Col­ored card­board col­ored pen draw­ing
2005, Auf­bau Ver­lag
 
Why exhib­it?
Why this piece and not anoth­er? Although I tried to think about it, I was at a loss. But since exhi­bi­tions are a fash­ion, there must be a rea­son.
 
So here is the expla­na­tion:

“A Pony Christ­mas” is my lat­est work. It cer­tain­ly took a long time to cre­ate. The beau­ty of cycli­cal events is that if you did­n’t fin­ish some­thing in 2004, you might be able to fin­ish it in 2005. But I admit, that argu­ment does­n’t hold water. If I could offer some eco­nom­ic rea­sons, per­haps a bet­ter expla­na­tion would be pos­si­ble: pro­mot­ing pony breed­ing, for exam­ple, or the pos­i­tive role ani­mals have played in the past and present.
 

No doubt, after such an open­ing, I fore­shad­owed even more incred­i­ble deci­sions, so I closed my thoughts and admit­ted that there didn’t seem to be any sol­id rea­son for choos­ing these five illus­tra­tions for the exhi­bi­tion.
 
Klaus Ensikat
Klaus ENSIKAT

•    
1937: Born in Berlin

•    
1951–1954: Trained as a com­mer­cial artist

•    
1954–1958: Stud­ied com­mer­cial graph­ic arts at the School of Applied Arts in Schö­nauwied, Berlin

•    
1961: Became a mem­ber of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Plas­tic Artists

•    
1972: “Der kleine Hob­bit” wins the Pre­mio Grafi­co Fiera di Bologna award

•    
1973: “Die Hochzeit des Pfaus” won the Gold­en Apple Award at the Bratisla­va Inter­na­tion­al Illus­tra­tion Bien­nale

•    
1979: “Der kleine Däum­ling” won the high­est award at the Bratisla­va Inter­na­tion­al Illus­tra­tion Bien­nale

•    
1985: Won the Hans-Baltzer-Preis Award for Chil­dren’s Pic­ture Book Illus­tra­tion

•    
1989: His com­plete works were award­ed the Guten­berg Prize of the City of Leipzig

•    
1990: Won the Jür­gen Spohn-fund­ed “Mag­ic Pen” Chil­dren’s Pic­ture Book Award

•    
1991: “Jed­er nach sein­er Art” won the Gold­en Apple Award at the Bratisla­va Inter­na­tion­al Illus­tra­tion Bien­nale

•    
1992, “Die Geschichte von den vier kleinen Kindern, die um die Welt
zogen” won the

                            
Inter­na­tion­al Chil­dren’s Pic­ture Book Illus­tra­tion Exhi­bi­tion Graph­ic Arts Award

•    
1993: Became a mem­ber of the Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Graph­ic Arts

•    
1995: Won the Ger­man Youth Lit­er­a­ture Award Spe­cial Award for Illus­tra­tion

•    
1996: Won the Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen Illus­tra­tion Award

•    
1995–2002: Pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Fine Arts in Ham­burg

•    
Cur­rent­ly lives in Berlin
 
Wolf Elbruch on “Learn from Me”
ABC》[Trans­la­tion]
Wolf ERLBRUCH on “Neues ABC-Buch”
(New ABC Book)
Mixed tech­niques, col­lage
2000, Antje Kun­st­mann Ver­lag
 
About forty years ago, I first encoun­tered Karl Philipp Moritz. His auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal nov­el “Anton Reis­er”
It tells the sto­ry of a young man grow­ing up in a harsh envi­ron­ment. Although the exter­nal envi­ron­ment is bad, the young man learns to find joy in hard­ship and main­tain a “hap­py spir­it”.
Fol­low Me
When I bought a copy of The ABCs of Life, I was deeply inspired by it—though I did­n’t under­stand exact­ly why until more than a decade lat­er. Now I think it was the book’s sim­ple sin­cer­i­ty that moved me: its belief that young peo­ple, by learn­ing to read and read­ing good books, can devel­op inde­pen­dent minds and become not only edu­cat­ed but also out­stand­ing peo­ple.
 

I haven’t been exposed to this kind of think­ing for a long time. Although I’m not con­vinced that edu­ca­tion and inde­pen­dent think­ing alone can make a good per­son, they are obvi­ous­ly cru­cial. Espe­cial­ly in this era of media image over­load, we (and of course our chil­dren) are con­stant­ly influ­enced by them, and the num­ber of peo­ple who don’t read is increas­ing. This book is exact­ly what we need.
 

Of course, there is already a beau­ti­ful pho­to­copy of this book, which I like very much, but I still want to express the con­tent of the book in anoth­er way through illus­tra­tions, hop­ing to attract a wider audi­ence, not just child psy­chol­o­gy experts. For­tu­nate­ly, my pub­lish­er Antje
Kun­st­mann was extreme­ly enthu­si­as­tic about this and gave me com­plete free­dom to cre­ate accord­ing to my own ideas.
 

There­fore, I cre­at­ed 26 new illus­tra­tions, care­ful­ly apply­ing var­i­ous aes­thet­ic meth­ods to con­nect the con­tent of the arti­cle with cur­rent visu­al and life expe­ri­ences in the most direct way pos­si­ble. The mate­r­i­al of the illus­tra­tion has a dual func­tion of form and infor­ma­tion. In fact, the artis­tic style always depends on the ide­o­log­i­cal con­tent to be con­veyed.
 

For exam­ple, a wealthy man hold­ing a gold­en cup stand­ing in the mid­dle of a ban­quet filled with guests (a por­tray­al of the extrav­a­gant life in Euro­pean soci­ety in the 1920s) is cer­tain­ly very dif­fer­ent from an ordi­nary per­son sim­ply sketched out.
 
I’m a lit­tle wor­ried about whether this book has lived up to its expec­ta­tions, but who knows?
 
Wolf Elbruch
Wolf ERLBRUCH

•    
1948: Born in Wup­per­tal

•    
1967–1974: Stud­ied at the Folk­wang Acad­e­my in Essen

•    
1974: Start­ed draw­ing for mag­a­zines, design­ing book cov­ers, posters and var­i­ous man­u­als

•    
1985: Start­ed illus­trat­ing chil­dren’s pic­ture books

•    
1990–1997: Pro­fes­sor of Graph­ic Design and Illus­tra­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences in Düs­sel­dorf

•    
1993: “Das Bären­wun­der” wins the Ger­man Youth Lit­er­a­ture Award

•    
1997: Begins pro­fes­sor of illus­tra­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wup­per­tal

•    
1999: “Nachts” wins the “Luchs” Prize (award­ed by “Zeitung”)

•    
1999: Solo exhi­bi­tion at the Pic­ture Book Muse­um in Trois­dorf

•    
2003: His com­plete works were award­ed the Guten­berg Prize of Leipzig, the Eduard von der Hey­dt Prize of Wup­per­tal,

                             
Kul­tur­preis Award and Spe­cial Prize of the Ger­man Youth Lit­er­a­ture Award

•    
2005: Solo exhi­bi­tion at the Hei­de Muse­um in Wup­per­tal

•    
Cur­rent­ly lives in Wup­per­tal

Jack­ie Gra­cie reviews “Night, Night, Don’t Come”
Jacky GLEICH on “Mit­ten in der Nacht”
(In the Mid­dle of the Night)
Oil paint­ing on trans­par­ent paper and trans­paren­cies
2002, Fis­ch­er Schatzin­sel
 

I’ve read many books about chil­dren’s fears, such as the fear of the dark, and they often min­i­mize these fears, por­tray­ing them as unnec­es­sary and fleet­ing, like some­thing tan­gi­ble. But in my expe­ri­ence, chil­dren’s fears are very real. They don’t under­stand why adults always say, “There’s noth­ing there.” Even turn­ing on the light only brings a fleet­ing sense of relief. I want­ed to make the fear as vivid and real­is­tic as pos­si­ble (with­in the lim­its of the pub­lish­er’s per­mis­sion), cap­tur­ing the true black­ness and eerie nature of dark­ness and night.
 

For me, it’s impor­tant not to hide any­thing but to allow chil­dren to find their own ways to over­come their fears, so that they even­tu­al­ly break down. The “mon­ster” was there, but it’s gone now. My daugh­ter has had numer­ous “encoun­ters” with these scary mon­sters; I asked her to describe them, and even­tu­al­ly, she learned how to cope with these sit­u­a­tions on her own.
 

Chil­dren often tell me that the mon­sters they fear look a lot like the ones in the books, so I try to make their fears clear, and per­haps help them over­come their fears by shar­ing them with oth­ers or laugh­ing about what scares them.
 

“Night, Night, Don’t Come” is par­tic­u­lar­ly spe­cial to me because the text and illus­tra­tions are so relat­able to young read­ers. Many adults find this book fright­en­ing, but chil­dren find it cap­ti­vat­ing. The two-dimen­sion­al images, vivid use of col­or and con­trast between light and dark, and the clar­i­ty of the mean­ing made these illus­tra­tions a focal point of the exhi­bi­tion.
 
Jack­ie Gra­cie
Jacky GLEICH

•    
1964: Born in Darm­stadt

•    
1965: Moved to East Ger­many

•    
               
After pass­ing her school-leav­ing exams and com­plet­ing train­ing as a set design­er for East Ger­man tele­vi­sion, she stud­ied at the Film Acad­e­my in Babers­berg and at Dre          

                     
       Stud­ied ani­ma­tion at the Stern Acad­e­my of Fine Arts

•    
1987: Start­ed work­ing as an ani­ma­tion pro­duc­er, direc­tor and graph­ic design­er

•    
1993: Found­ing of the KREATUR ani­ma­tion film stu­dio, pro­duc­ing the pup­pet show “Die Klei­der des Her­rn Zogg”

                           
(After Franz Hohler)

•    
1995: Start­ed illus­trat­ing chil­dren’s pic­ture books

•    
1998: “Hat Opa einen Anzug an?” (co-authored with Amelie Fried) won the Ger­man Youth Lit­er­a­ture Award

                   
          Award, “The Most Beau­ti­ful Book in the World” Award, Prix
Chronos (France) Prize and oth­er awards

•    
2004: “Der Auf­satz” (co-authored with Anto­nio Skármeta) won the Gus­tav Heine­mann

                              
Frieden­spreis Award

•    
Cur­rent­ly liv­ing in Meck­len­burg
Niko­laus Hei­de­bach The Thir­teenth Fairy[Trans­la­tion]
Niko­laus HEIDELBACH on “Die dreizehnte Fee”
(The Thir­teenth Fairy)
Pen, ink, water­col­or
2002, Beltz & Gel­berg
 

In 1995, after I had spent two years illus­trat­ing the Broth­ers Grimm fairy tales, I dis­cov­ered that, like oth­er books I had tak­en on before (this time fairy tales), the char­ac­ters and themes in the books would linger in my mind. For exam­ple, the twelve kind fairies, under my illus­tra­tions, became twelve witch­es, prepar­ing many pranks for chil­dren. Although I added a title page, with­out any writ­ten expla­na­tion, I put them aside.
 

Five years lat­er, the witch­es appeared in an exhi­bi­tion at the Pic­ture Book Muse­um in Trois­dorf. My pub­lish­er, Jochen  
Gel­berg saw them there and told me it was a book for chil­dren, which sur­prised me a bit. I had nev­er thought of it that way, but the idea real­ly appealed to me.
 

So, fol­low­ing the idea of Sleep­ing Beau­ty, I turned the witch­es back into fairies. They need­ed a thir­teenth fairy, a kind fairy. I thought of Bernadette, my son Alfred’s ele­men­tary school teacher.
Kleve, the rest of the sto­ry hap­pened in class and just flowed out of the writ­ing process. Then all I had to do was draw a cov­er illus­tra­tion and an end­ing, and the book was done.
 
After a long and com­pli­cat­ed cre­ative process, I can say that this book is my favorite work at present and also my new work.
 
Niko­laus Hei­del­bach
Niko­laus HEIDELBACH

•    
1955: Born in Lahn­stein

•    
Stud­ied Ger­man lit­er­a­ture and art his­to­ry in Cologne and Berlin

•    
In addi­tion to illus­trat­ing chil­dren’s pic­ture books, he also pub­lish­es pic­ture books for adults, draws for mag­a­zines and designs book cov­ers.

            
The work is an illus­tra­tion for the Artemis Fowl nov­el

•    
1982: “Das Ele­fan­ten­tr­e­f­fen” wins the Old­en­burg Chil­dren’s Pic­ture Book Prize

•    
1984: “Eine Nacht mit Wil­helm” won the sec­ond prize of the Trois­dorf Pic­ture Book Award

•    
1986: “Der Ball” won the sec­ond prize of the Trois­dorf Pic­ture Book Award

•    
1988: “Vor­sicht Kinder!” Win­ner of the first prize of the Trois­dorf Pic­ture Book Award

•    
1992: “Albrecht Fafn­er fast allein” wins the North Rhine-West­phalia Chil­dren’s Pic­ture Book Award

•    
1994: “Kinder­paradies” wins the Schn­abel­ste­herpreis Award

•    
1995: “Was machen die Mäd­chen?” Win­ner of the Bologna Ragazzi Nov­el Prize

•    
2000: The com­plete works of the nov­el won the Spe­cial Award of the Ger­man Youth Lit­er­a­ture Award

•    
2001: Solo exhi­bi­tion at the Pic­ture Book Muse­um in Trois­dorf

•    
Cur­rent­ly lives in Cologne
 
Sibyl Hein reviews Ruthie Berg: The Vil­lage Girl Who Desires to Become Queen
Sybille HEIN on “Rut­ti Berg, die Bäuerin, wär so gerne
Köni­gin”
(Rut­ti Berg, the Farmer’s Wife Who’d Like to be Queen)
Water­col­or, col­ored pen­cils
2005, Bajaz­zo Pub­lish­ing
 
Why do I most want to bring Rudi Berger’s illus­tra­tions to the world?
 

First­ly, because this was my first time illus­trat­ing my own sto­ry, a project I poured a tremen­dous amount of blood, sweat, and tears into. Sec­ond­ly, it gave me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to write about a theme I love: the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness despite all odds, while also inte­grat­ing the 70 or so dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters with­in us into one suc­cess­ful attempt at life. I’ve always want­ed to illus­trate a “flip book,” and I hope those split pages will also split life in two, unfold­ing one after anoth­er. Even if that does­n’t hap­pen, at least it’s still a lot of fun!
 
Final­ly, if I let Rut­ti
While Berg embarks on a jour­ney of dis­cov­ery to far­away places (in this case, trade shows), my spir­it trav­els with her, while I can sit by the fire­place at home with a few friends and sip lemon­ade. What more could you ask for?
 
Sybil Hein
Sybille HEIN

•    
1970: Born in Wolfen­büt­tel

•    
Stud­ied illus­tra­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Graph­ic Arts in Ham­burg

•    
1999: Start­ed illus­trat­ing chil­dren’s pic­ture books and draw­ing pic­tures for mag­a­zines and peri­od­i­cals

•    
2005: “Ein Märchen ist ein Märchen ist ein Märchen”
Award for Aus­tri­an Chil­dren and Youth Lit­er­a­ture

                             
award

•    
Cur­rent­ly lives in Berlin
 
 
 
Yanos Com­men­tary Mouse Sher­iff[Trans­la­tion]
Janosch on “Der Mäuse­sh­er­iff”
(The Mouse Sher­iff)
Pen, water­col­or
1969, Georg Bit­ter Ver­lag
 
My favorite book of mine is
“Inspec­tor Mouse.” By the age of six, I could already read, but I was the short­est and weak­est boy in my class. So, at first, I focused on self-help books, whose sto­ries strength­ened me.
 
At that time, sto­ries about cow­boy heroes were very pop­u­lar, such as Tom Mix and Old
Shat­ter­hand. I also formed a small gang, fight­ing for jus­tice, and our biggest ene­my is the gang­sters. My gang has two mem­bers, one of whom is Karl
Schnapp­ka, a tall, strong man three years my senior, but a bit of a fool, did every­thing I told him. So, I pre­tend­ed to be a sher­iff, boast­ing about my own exploits, and his job was to use his pow­er to pro­tect me. In return, I did his home­work and gave him orders as a sher­iff.
 
We were very suc­cess­ful. The men­tion of our name would scare the gang­sters away. Of course, I called myself Tom Mix, and Kalle
Schnapp­ka is Win­netou.
 

I also believe in our pow­er. At first I admired the pow­er of fists, then the pow­er of words shout­ed loud­ly, and only lat­er did I dis­cov­er the pow­er of ideas. Ideas orig­i­nal­ly came from books, but in fact they are every­where. When Kalle
After Schnapp­ka failed again, he was trans­ferred to a spe­cial school, leav­ing me alone to deal with the gang­sters. By then, the six-man gang was already my unde­feat­ed ene­my. All I had to do was chase them and shout, and they’d flee. This, with­out a doubt, was the pow­er of language—my sec­ond enlight­en­ment.
 
I con­tin­ue the sto­ry of Sher­iff Mouse in my book “Schi­man­s­ki: The Pow­er With­in.”
 
How­ev­er, this book touch­es on a deep­er lev­el: the pow­er of the spir­it. The bat­tles take place in the uni­verse and the galaxy, and the sto­ry is set lat­er in the future. It has become my favorite book, but if it is not
There­fore, “Mouse Sher­iff” is my first favorite book.
 
Yan­nos
Janosch

•    
1931: Born in Zabrze, Poland

•    
Raised by his grand­par­ents, he began his appren­tice­ship as a black­smith and met­al­work­er at the age of 13.

•    
After World War II, the fam­i­ly moved to West Ger­many

•    
Then he start­ed work­ing in the tex­tile indus­try, and in 1953 he entered the Munich Acad­e­my of Fine Arts and lat­er went to the Tex­tile School in Krefeld.

        
    Insti­tute of Advanced Stud­ies

•    
1960: Georg Lentz Ver­lag pub­lish­es his first chil­dren’s pic­ture book (using the pseu­do­nym “Janosch”)

•    
1975: Adult nov­el “Cholonek oder der liebe Gott aus Lehm” (1970,
Bit­ter Pub­lish­ing) and

            
The com­plete works of the book won the Munich Lit­er­a­ture Award

•    
1979: “Oh, wie schön ist Pana­ma” won the Ger­man Youth Lit­er­a­ture Prize and in the fol­low­ing years also won many oth­er

            
Its major awards

•    
1998: Solo exhi­bi­tion at the Pic­ture Book Muse­um in Trois­dorf

•    
1999: Almost all of his illus­tra­tions for pic­ture books were loaned to the Pic­ture Book Muse­um in Trois­dorf for a long term.

            
Muse­um Col­lec­tion

•    
Cur­rent­ly lives in Tener­ife
 
 
Car­oli­na Kay reviews “Go Away, You Pau­per!”[Trans­la­tion]
Karo­line KEHR on “Schwi-Schwa-Schweine­hund”
(Slip-Slap-Sloth)
Mod­el Tech­nol­o­gy
2001, Alt­ber­lin­er Ver­lag
 
Is there any­one with­out “inner iner­tia”? When­ev­er faced with the call of respon­si­bil­i­ty, a stub­born voice with­in us resounds, gen­tly and seduc­tive­ly, beck­on­ing us astray.
 

As I was rack­ing my brains over an idea for a pic­ture book, my inner lazi­ness qui­et­ly sur­faced. Although I knew the best ideas often come to me after search­ing for them for noth­ing, and that forc­ing myself to cre­ate was futile, I sat down at my desk and began to think. After a moment, I heard the voice offer a series of tempt­ing sug­ges­tions. “Why not take a walk and enjoy the sun­shine?” “You can con­tin­ue writ­ing tomor­row!” “Put every­thing aside and relax!” Unfor­tu­nate­ly, none of these sug­ges­tions helped my sto­ry­telling. I steeled myself, resist­ing dis­trac­tion, but still, no good sto­ry emerged. And so it went, day after day.
 

Then, some­thing changed every­thing. While I was work­ing on my project, that pig reap­peared. As always, it showed up when you did­n’t need it (which, in fact, was the only time it showed up)! And what else could it pos­si­bly do besides mess things up? “Why not relax on the couch…?” it sug­gest­ed. This time, I gave in. I lay down on the couch, closed my eyes, and did noth­ing. Sud­den­ly, I felt some­thing jump out and curl up beside me. I opened my eyes and saw it, right there in front of me: my inner iner­tia! It whis­pered in my ear, “Since you have noth­ing else to do right now, you could always write a sto­ry about me. At least, I can eas­i­ly help you with that!”
 

This encounter inspired the idea for my pic­ture book. From then on, I real­ized that lazi­ness is a sep­a­rate enti­ty with­in us, a vibrant and enthu­si­as­tic being bent on pleas­ing our desires. All of us—children and adults—experience the intense strug­gle between plea­sure and respon­si­bil­i­ty, between nat­ur­al iner­tia and self-moti­va­tion. So, what could be more nat­ur­al and appro­pri­ate than to make lazi­ness the theme of a pic­ture book and give con­crete form to this inner iner­tia? The biggest chal­lenge in cre­at­ing this book was keep­ing it con­cise, as I want­ed to tell the sto­ry pri­mar­i­ly through pic­tures.
 

I think the artis­tic tech­niques used in this book com­ple­ment the sto­ry­telling per­fect­ly. The illus­tra­tions are cre­at­ed using a fea­ture mod­el­ing tech­nique: I first con­struct a three-dimen­sion­al back­ground, pho­to­graph it, and then paint the char­ac­ters direct­ly onto the pho­to­graph using acrylic paint. This cre­ates a sense of both real­ism and fan­ta­sy in both the sto­ry­telling and the illus­tra­tions.
 
Car­oli­na Kayle
Karo­line KEHR

•    
1964: Born in Bad Salzu­flen

•    
Stud­ied illus­tra­tion at the Design Acad­e­my in Ham­burg

•    
1994: “Ernst stand auf und August blieb liegen”
Won the first prize of Trois­dorf Pic­ture Book Award

            
award

•    
2002: “Go Away, You Annoy­ing Guy!” Nom­i­nat­ed for the Ger­man Youth Lit­er­a­ture Award

•    
2004: “Ich kann zaubern, Mami!” won third prize in the Trois­dorf Pic­ture Book Award

•    
Cur­rent­ly lives in Ham­burg
 
 
Arthur Shaf­fer­’s review of “Rick is so hand­some…!”[Trans­la­tion]
Axel SCHEFFLER on “Riese Rick macht sich schick”
(The Smartest Giant in Town)
Water­col­or, col­ored pen­cil, gouache
2002, Beltz & Gel­berg
 

I am Ger­man, but have lived in the UK since 1982. In 1986, I start­ed work­ing as an illus­tra­tor for chil­dren’s books for Ger­man and British pub­lish­ing com­pa­nies. Some­times peo­ple ask me if Ger­many or the UK has a par­tic­u­lar influ­ence on my illus­tra­tions, and I often don’t know how to answer. Ide­al­ly, I would like these books to appeal to chil­dren all over the world. There­fore, in
“Riese Rick”
In “The Sto­ry of the Giant,” I tried to blend dia­logue from Ger­man and British chil­dren’s books. The archi­tec­ture in the illus­tra­tions also blends char­ac­ter­is­tics from both coun­tries. In the world of pic­ture books, if not every­thing, then at least most things are pos­si­ble. Rick lives in a fairy­tale world. (I won­der why the sto­ry is set in sum­mer, yet the giraffe and Rick feel so cold? There must be a howl­ing wind!) I con­jure up a land­scape in my mind, but I don’t know exact­ly where it comes from. No one seems to care that giants and nor­mal peo­ple live along­side dwarfs and ani­mals wear­ing clothes. (Where is the giant’s house? Did the illus­tra­tor for­get? I imag­ine it must be some­where out of sight in the town.) Cars speed along one-way streets; in the inter­na­tion­al pic­ture book mar­ket, dri­ving on the left or right is taboo. What Rick is actu­al­ly wear­ing remains a mys­tery to me. The author sug­gests “shep­herd’s robes”; I used a blur­ry image down­loaded from the inter­net as a tem­plate, so he’s cur­rent­ly wear­ing paja­mas. (But I still can’t imag­ine a shep­herd in paja­mas.) Anoth­er inter­est­ing ques­tion is: can a giraffe in a pic­ture book wear a tie? One Scot­tish read­er thought the book was too dan­ger­ous. To pro­tect chil­dren from imi­tat­ing the pic­tures and stran­gling them­selves with their ties, he per­sis­tent­ly cor­re­spond­ed with the pub­lish­er. He final­ly gave up after the book was pub­lished. For­tu­nate­ly, there have been no reports of chil­dren being stran­gled to death by ties.
 
Arthur Scha­ef­fer
Axel SCHEFFLER

•    
1957: Born in Ham­burg

•    
Stud­ied art his­to­ry in Ham­burg

•    
1982–1985: Stud­ied graph­ic design in Cor­sham, near Bath, Eng­land

•    
In addi­tion to illus­trat­ing pic­ture books, he also draws pic­tures for mag­a­zines and peri­od­i­cals.

•    
1999: “The Gruffa­lo” (co-authored with author Julia Don­ald­son) won the UK Nes­tle Smar­ties

            
Prize

•    
2005: “The Gruffalo’s Child” won the British Book Award

•    
Cur­rent­ly lives in Lon­don
 
Philip Wiechter Haunt­ed House Adven­ture[Trans­la­tion]
Philip WAECHTER on “Rosi in der Geis­ter­bahn”
(Rosie and the Night­mares)
Ink pen, mag­ic pen, col­ored pen­cil
2005, Beltz & Gel­berg
 

As an artist, I often devel­op a close rela­tion­ship with the sto­ries I illus­trate. This is espe­cial­ly true when I’m both writ­ing and illus­trat­ing the sto­ries. The slow process of devel­op­ing a pic­ture book con­cept, let­ting the words and pic­tures incu­bate simul­ta­ne­ous­ly (rather than illus­trat­ing a pre-writ­ten, “strange” sto­ry), is par­tic­u­lar­ly con­ducive to cre­at­ing the pic­ture book I envi­sion. Clear­ly, “Haunt­ed Man­sion” is that book.
 
Orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed “Rosi”
When I first thought of the book, I had a sim­ple image in my mind: a smug lit­tle rab­bit sit­ting in a car­riage, appar­ent­ly a ghost train, sur­round­ed by many scary mon­sters. This image alone cap­tured my imag­i­na­tion (espe­cial­ly the eerie back­ground of the ghost train), so I wrote a sto­ry about it and illus­trat­ed it as a pic­ture book.
 
Philip•Wicht
Philip WAECHTER

•    
1968: Born in Frank­furt

•    
Stud­ied Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Design at the High­er Voca­tion­al Col­lege in Mainz, spe­cial­iz­ing in Illus­tra­tion

•    
1995: Start­ed illus­trat­ing chil­dren’s pic­ture books

•    
1999: Became a found­ing mem­ber of the LABOR stu­dio team

•    
1999: “Schaf ahoi” wins the “Die Bre­mer Besten” award

•    
2001: “Die Reise nach Ameri­ka” is includ­ed in The White Ravens (Munich Inter­na­tion­al Book Soci­ety for Young Peo­ple)

            
Library’s annu­al rec­om­mend­ed book list)

•    
2003: “Die Geschichte meines Opas” won the “Most Beau­ti­ful Ger­man Book” Award (award­ed by the “Book Art Foun­da­tion”

            
(Award­ed by the “Asso­ci­a­tion”)

•    
2004: “Ich” won the “Most Beau­ti­ful Ger­man Book” Award (award­ed by the “Book Art Foun­da­tion”)

•    
Cur­rent­ly liv­ing in Frank­furt
 
Katya Win­er Review Rab­bits Just Can’t Whis­tle[Trans­la­tion]
Kat­ja WEHNER on “Hasen pfeifen nicht”
(Rab­bits Don’t Whis­tle)
Poster paint, col­loid paint, col­ored pen­cils
2004, Auf­bau Ver­lag
 
Lud­vik Aske­nazy’s “Rab­bit Can’t Whis­tle” is a short and sweet mas­ter­piece, although the sto­ry is a bit tor­tu­ous to under­stand.
 

A rab­bit want­ed to learn to whis­tle. He trav­eled around, hop­ing to find a teacher who could teach him how to whis­tle. He final­ly found one: a ground­hog. Although the rab­bit was very intel­li­gent, no mat­ter how hard he tried, he could nev­er learn to whis­tle.
 

I must admit, the first time I read this sto­ry, I felt a bit bit­ter. After all, the end­ing isn’t hap­py. I start­ed draw­ing from the last page. It showed a rab­bit sit­ting on a long bench. It was rain­ing, hud­dled under a giant umbrel­la, star­ing at the read­er with a lost expres­sion. After I fin­ished this pic­ture, it was hard to con­tin­ue. Every time I look at it, I seem to feel a sense of loss.
 

Then, I decid­ed to shift the focus and down­play the rab­bit’s sense of “fail­ure.” He should­n’t be por­trayed as a “fail­ure,” but rather as some­one who deserves respect for hav­ing done his best to achieve his goal. Any­way, the rab­bit even­tu­al­ly made a whis­tle-like sound, albeit an imper­fect one that sound­ed a bit strange.
 
In my opin­ion, the whis­tle teacher’s arro­gant atti­tude is also to blame. For exam­ple, the ground­hog said, “I can tell him how to whis­tle, but there is no way he can learn it.”
Aske­nazy cap­tures the char­ac­ter so vivid­ly in just a few words, because the ground­hog is, in fact, com­plete­ly unin­ter­est­ed in teach­ing whistling skills.
 

When you reflect on the rab­bit’s learn­ing process, you will think about your own abil­i­ties, unful­filled dreams, and friend­ship. Then, you will be sur­prised to real­ize how much pro­found wis­dom is hid­den in this short arti­cle.
 
Katya•Wella
Kat­ja WEHNER

•    
1976: Born in Dessau

•    
Stud­ied illus­tra­tion and book art in Leipzig and Prague

•    
Held an exhi­bi­tion at the Illus­tra­tors’ Forum in Paris

•    
Received the Wil­helm-und-Lotte-Neufeld-Stiftung schol­ar­ship

•    
Cur­rent­ly lives in Leipzig