“The Swing”: A Non-Customized Picture Book Worth Gifting to Your Future Self

The swing has always been there.

It looks out to sea and invites every­one to take a seat.

…

The swing is still there.

It looks out to sea and invites every­one to take a seat.

It is a place of begin­nings

…

This is the begin­ning and end of “The Swing”, writ­ten and illus­trat­ed by Ger­man pic­ture book artist Brit­ta Teck­en­trup. It is like the ebb and flow of the tide on the beach, ris­ing is also falling, falling is also ris­ing; it is also like a cycle of time, the begin­ning is also the end, the end is also the begin­ning…

​This pic­ture book is 160 pages long, far exceed­ing the length of a nor­mal “chil­dren’s pic­ture book”. The small square size book opens into a stretched rec­tan­gle; the pages are some­times half text and half pic­ture, some­times the whole pic­ture with­out words fills the whole page, some­times the words are dot­ted like musi­cal notes, some­times the pic­ture is reduced to leave blank space beside or above and below, and some­times it is divid­ed into reg­u­lar or irreg­u­lar small pic­tures, the rhythm is accel­er­at­ed, and the imaged text also sways along… The lay­out com­po­si­tion is like a poem and paint­ing, reveal­ing a qui­et con­tem­pla­tion, and in the con­stant change, it hides a gen­tle and warm leap. Turn­ing the pages gen­tly and read­ing qui­et­ly, it seems as if you can hear the sooth­ing sound of the waves, or a famil­iar and vague piece of music.

The biggest reward of trans­lat­ing a book is that you can, as a spe­cial read­er, deeply immerse your­self in the con­text that the author has worked hard to cre­ate, because before con­vert­ing the lan­guage, the “read­er” as the trans­la­tor needs to read it repeat­ed­ly to ful­ly feel and under­stand the inter­est of the work. The feel­ing of read­ing “The Swing” care­ful­ly is quite sub­tle. It “dis­tract­ed” me to some extent. I often drift­ed away from the clues of the pic­ture and text nar­ra­tive, and uncon­scious­ly pro­duced some quite diver­gent asso­ci­a­tions.

For exam­ple, I can’t help but think of the smell of the sea­side. This is not sur­pris­ing to me because I was born by the sea, but I have lived inland for most of my life. So when­ev­er I have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to stroll along the beach, I can’t help but smell the “sea smell” that oth­ers think of.

But what’s inter­est­ing is that I actu­al­ly thought of the mod­ern dance of Ger­man dance artist Pina Bausch, which I saw at the Tian­qiao The­ater in Bei­jing more than a decade ago. The ele­gance, pow­er, and inde­scrib­able feel­ing left a deep impres­sion on me. I think it may be because I read an inter­view with Brit­ta, who grew up in Wup­per­tal, Ger­many, where Pina Bausch lived. She said: “I guess that Pina Bausch and grow­ing up around so much nature had a big impact on my work.” Indeed, the attempt to explore deep emo­tions and com­plex and fas­ci­nat­ing human rela­tion­ships through artis­tic activ­i­ties can be felt in Pina’s dance and Brit­ta’s pic­ture books.

​I also inex­plic­a­bly recalled the past when I took my daugh­ter to see a Chopin musi­cal. We both liked the var­i­ous music selec­tions in the play and felt very famil­iar, but there were only two choral songs that seemed par­tic­u­lar­ly fresh and I could­n’t tell which two Chopin songs they were. So, dri­ven by strong curios­i­ty, I tried to send an email to a young musi­cian who was play­ing the piano on the stage at the time, whom I did­n’t know at all, for help. Then I unex­pect­ed­ly received an enthu­si­as­tic reply. It turned out that she was in charge of the arrange­ment of the musi­cal, and the two real­ly “uncom­mon” pieces of music were actu­al­ly from Pol­ish folk songs — I lis­tened to them many times lat­er, and I can still remem­ber the main melody of one of them…

Maybe I have gone too far off top­ic, but what I real­ly want to say is that mem­o­ry is real­ly a bit “inex­plic­a­ble”. We always want to “choose” mem­o­ry, and in fact we try very hard to choose, but mem­o­ry seems to have its own life and will, and some­times it seems to “choose” us in turn.

On the book review web­site Goodreads.com, a read­er com­ment­ed on “The Swing”: “Anoth­er chil­dren’s book that makes me want to cry, in a good way.” Although this book was not tai­lor-made for this read­er, it still touched her tears. I guess it also “inex­plic­a­bly” evoked some mem­o­ries.

This is actu­al­ly a book that Brit­ta cus­tomized for her­self. In an inter­view, she recalled that the inspi­ra­tion for writ­ing “The Swing” orig­i­nal­ly came from the swing in her grand­moth­er’s gar­den dur­ing her child­hood. There, she spent many care­free times, and these expe­ri­ences became the start­ing point for her to think about the flow of life, emo­tion­al changes and mem­o­ry preser­va­tion. After grow­ing up, when­ev­er she returned to her home­town and passed by the play­ground she often vis­it­ed as a child, those aban­doned swings seemed to car­ry traces of time and pre­cip­i­tat­ed mem­o­ries. For her, the swing is not only a phys­i­cal space, but also a con­tain­er of emo­tion and mem­o­ry, wit­ness­ing the pas­sage of time and the changes in life. Espe­cial­ly those aban­doned swings, they seem par­tic­u­lar­ly mys­te­ri­ous and lone­ly, but full of life poten­tial.

​When design­ing the nar­ra­tive struc­ture of “The Swing”, Brit­ta chose a non-lin­ear approach, which brought a unique flu­id­i­ty to the sto­ry. Dif­fer­ent from the tra­di­tion­al lin­ear nar­ra­tive method, “The Swing” uses alter­nat­ing char­ac­ters and scenes, break­ing the order of time and events, and cre­at­ing a freer way of expres­sion. There is no strict chrono­log­i­cal order for each char­ac­ter’s encounter with the swing in the sto­ry, but the swing is used as a con­nec­tion point to con­nect the sto­ries of var­i­ous stages of life.

​The choice of this struc­ture coin­cides with the metaphor of the swing itself: the swing rep­re­sents the fluc­tu­a­tion and uncer­tain­ty in life, and time and emo­tions flow in a con­stant back and forth. It is this “swing­ing” rhythm that makes the whole book appear free and lay­ered.

So, what kind of mem­o­ries are car­ried by the swing?

As a pic­ture book for chil­dren, the most vis­i­ble thing is the game between chil­dren and swings. There are chil­dren play­ing alone, two peo­ple play­ing togeth­er, and many peo­ple play­ing togeth­er. Some enjoy the present moment, some indulge in imag­i­na­tion, and some gath­er and talk beside the swings. As the years go by and the scenes change, the swing begins a free-flow­ing con­nec­tion jour­ney, extend­ing from the friend­ship between chil­dren, the broth­er­hood between broth­ers and sis­ters, to the affec­tion between par­ents and chil­dren and the gen­er­a­tions beyond, and from an old man’s mem­o­ries of his wife to love.

​Just as a swing swings up and down, life nat­u­ral­ly has its moments of loss. “Loss” may be one of the themes that makes this book quite fas­ci­nat­ing, because the swing not only wit­ness­es joy, but also car­ries sad­ness. At cer­tain times, the swing is emp­ty, and the sur­round­ing nat­ur­al scenery is filled with lone­li­ness and empti­ness. Sad­ness will vis­it the swing, but it will even­tu­al­ly leave, sym­bol­iz­ing that the feel­ing of loss is short-lived, but it can­not stay for­ev­er.

​Brit­ta seems to have delib­er­ate­ly made the nar­ra­tive struc­ture of this book appear “loose”, but in fact, through the changes in page lay­outs and illus­tra­tions, she clev­er­ly imi­tat­ed the move­ment of the swing and the pas­sage of time, metaphor­i­cal­ly rep­re­sent­ing the imper­ma­nence and flow of life. After read­ing it repeat­ed­ly, I vague­ly found an over­all clue, and felt that the artist was explor­ing the theme of “mem­o­ry and loss, recov­ery and recon­struc­tion” through the image of the swing.

For exam­ple, Mia’s dai­ly com­pan­ion­ship with her grand­moth­er, the elder­ly’s nos­tal­gia for their deceased wives, and Peter’s desire to show his abil­i­ties to his father and the world… That is the part of mem­o­ries. When­ev­er the swing stops, it often sym­bol­izes the stag­na­tion of time and the sev­er­ance of inter­per­son­al rela­tion­ships. It is a kind of loss, not heavy, but with a hint of gen­tle sad­ness. The most touch­ing part is the recov­ery and recon­struc­tion after a peri­od of blank­ness. For exam­ple, Peter, who has trav­eled the world and proved him­self, takes his son back to “where it all began.” When the swing was destroyed by a storm, the peo­ple who had found com­fort here worked togeth­er to repair it, sym­bol­iz­ing the recon­struc­tion of emo­tions and mem­o­ries. Whether it is the re-cher­ish­ing of fam­i­ly affec­tion or the re-pick­ing up of loss, the swing has become a wit­ness to peo­ple’s emo­tion­al recon­struc­tion. It is not only a mem­o­ry of the past, but also a hope for the future.

Of course, for such a “scat­tered” book, every­one may read dif­fer­ent sto­ries, and some frag­ments and pic­tures in it may evoke com­plete­ly unex­pect­ed mem­o­ries. Brit­ta keeps this open. Some­one asked her if she has her own favorite sto­ry or favorite pic­ture in this book? She said, maybe Peter and his relat­ed sto­ries, or maybe the pic­ture of the swing stand­ing in the sea? But her favorite illus­tra­tions are “The swing was a place to share secrets”, or “On some Novem­ber days, the sea com­plete­ly dis­ap­peared.” — which may be relat­ed to some of her own mem­o­ries.

As for me, I like the four con­sec­u­tive pages after “When Jill looked out over the sea…” the most. “Doesn’t the sea hold more secrets than the sky?” — This is an irre­sistible ques­tion for peo­ple who have liked to be in a daze in some way since child­hood. Look at the next two pages — Brit­ta cre­at­ed an impres­sion­ist paint­ing-like effect through soft tones and clever light pre­sen­ta­tion. The swing stand­ing in the sea water per­fect­ly presents the state of day­dream­ing. As the col­ors grad­u­al­ly change, even the text is inte­grat­ed into the pic­ture. Then, as the pages con­tin­ue to turn, read­ers will feel that they are inte­grat­ed into the sparkling sea!

“The Swing” is indeed not a “chil­dren’s pic­ture book” in the gen­er­al sense, and of course it is not cus­tomized for cer­tain groups of peo­ple, but every read­er, child or adult, can read his or her own sto­ry in the book and con­nect with his or her own pri­vate mem­o­ries. In a sense, life is made up of a series of mem­o­ries, mem­o­ries that we choose, or mem­o­ries that we choose to retell, includ­ing the way we rely on to retell.

“The Swing”, a pic­ture book that is both poet­ic and philo­soph­i­cal, and visu­al­ly breath­tak­ing, is a mas­ter­ful attempt at re-nar­ra­tion. It has the pow­er to res­onate deeply with read­ers, con­nect­ing the present to the past, and the future to the now. It is, in many ways, a pre­cious gift—one that you might give to your future self.

With­in the book, the swing serves as an eter­nal symbol—spanning time and space, it becomes a mir­ror through which each read­er may glimpse their own turn­ing points in life. It is a beau­ti­ful means of con­nec­tion, offer­ing a pro­found med­i­ta­tion on mem­o­ry, loss, and renewal—worthy of our con­tem­pla­tion at every junc­ture, now and in the years to come.

Indeed, life is full of uncer­tain­ty. And yet, per­haps it is this very uncer­tain­ty that makes life so aching­ly beau­ti­ful. Don’t you think?

Ajia writ­ten in Bei­jing on April 30, 2025