Contemporary Swedish Illustrators

Emma Adbåge Pija Lindenbaum
Lisen Adbåge Eva Lindström
Siri Ahmed Backström Sara Lundberg
Anna Bengtsson Jan Lööf
Ida Björs Jockum Nordström
Karin Cyrén Sven Nordqvist
Clara Dackenberg Klara Persson
Helena Davidsson Charlotte Ramel
Neppelberg Matilda Ruta
Eva Eriksson Lena Sjöberg
Ann Forslind Pernilla Stalfelt
Gunna Grähs Anna-Clara Tidholm
Joanna Hellgren Ilon Wikland
Anna Höglund Emma Virke
Maria Jönsson Stina Wirsén
Olof Landström Emelie Östergren
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© Swedish Art Council 2013
Graphic design: Studio Mats Hedman
Editor: Ylva Lagercrantz Spindler
Text: Andreas Berg, Annika Gunnarsson, Lena Kåreland
Translation: Exacta
isbn: 978-91-85259-95-3
Printed by Ineko, Stockholm, 2013
Illustrations are in some cases cropped in dialogue with the illustrators.
The Swedish Art Council supports, develops and initiates cooperations between the state,
the region, the municipalities and representatives for cultural life in Sweden, e.g. libraries,
museums and performing arts centres. The aim is to safeguard and develop Swedish
national cultural policy, and to promote cultural diversity and even
geographical spread in cultural provision.
The Swedish Arts Council
PO Box 27215, SE 102 53 Stockholm
Phone: +46-8-519 264 00
[email protected]
www.artscouncil.se
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Content
Preface
The Story of Swedish Picturebooks
The Jury’s Work
5
7
22
Contemporary Swedish Illustrators
Emma Adbåge
Lisen Adbåge
Siri Ahmed Backström
Anna Bengtsson
Ida Björs
Karin Cyrén
Clara Dackenberg
Helena Davidsson Neppelberg
Eva Eriksson
Ann Forslind
Gunna Grähs
Joanna Hellgren
Anna Höglund
Maria Jönsson
Olof Landström
Pija Lindenbaum
Eva Lindström
Sara Lundberg
Jan Lööf
Sven Nordqvist
Jockum Nordström
Klara Persson
Charlotte Ramel
Matilda Ruta
Lena Sjöberg
Pernilla Stalfelt
Anna-Clara Tidholm
Ilon Wikland
Emma Virke
Stina Wirsén
Emelie Östergren
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30
34
38
42
46
50
54
58
62
66
70
74
78
82
86
90
94
98
102
106
110
114
118
122
126
130
134
138
142
146
Presentation of the Jury
150
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4
Preface
Kennet Johansson, Director general
Swedish Arts Council
Children’s right to culture is the theme for 2013 as Sweden attends the Children’s Book Fair in Bologna,
for the first time as guest of honour. At the fair, we present the works of 31 of Sweden’s most interesting
contemporary children’s book illustrators. This richly illustrated catalogue will give you a broad picture
of the history of children’s books in Sweden, the jury selection process and present the selected illustrators
and their works. In this way we hope to provide you as a reader with a good idea of t​ he current position
of Swedish children’s book illustration.
Our participation gives us an opportunity to promote and present Swedish literature for children
and young adults at the world’s largest book fair for children’s literature. This is a trade fair exclusively
for adults but, in the absence of children, this makes it even more important for us to focus on the child
perspective. Children’s right to culture is about the right to a position in society, to express themselves
and to have access to different expressions to be inspired, acknowledged and heard.
Literature has a special place in children’s culture – and the child has a special place in literature.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child requires its signatories to encourage the production and
circulation of children’s books. In daily news reports in media, we often see children as vulnerable, as
victims of disasters and accidents. Occasionally in interview situations, children are allowed to speak for
themselves, but generally we talk about children – not to them. Literature for children and young adults
helps to give them a voice. The illustrators presented in our exhibition take a genuine child perspective,
focusing on children and children’s issues, rendering them visible not only to the children themselves
but also to adults. This is, of course, by no means unique to Sweden. The Astrid Lindgren Memorial
Award, for instance, has honoured first-class literature from Austria, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Japan,
the Netherlands, the UK and the USA over the past ten years.
Debates on quality, messages and content are always current. By children’s right to culture, we also
mean children’s right to art, “to participate freely in cultural life and the arts” as the UN Convention puts it.
Children must have the possibility to be exposed to challenging art and to see art from different
perspectives. They must be able to take part in diverse forms of expression that may be important, funny,
surprising and investigating. Children should not be diminished or ridiculed. Children are people and
citizens, just little less experienced. But they live here and now. They are not waiting to become adults,
and we cannot predict what they will need in twenty years time – but we can listen to them and find
out what they need right now.
5
ivar arosenius
6
From Kattresan (1909)
The Story of Swedish Picturebooks
Lena Kåreland
Picturebooks have long accounted for
a large proportion of children’s book
publishing in Sweden. Over 200 original
Swedish picturebooks were published in
2011. The history of picturebooks is closely
linked with developments in printing.
It was thanks to new printing techniques
that a greater number of picture books
were produced in Sweden towards the end
of the 19th century. Sweden at this point
had a sufficiently wide readership, the
technical ability to reproduce pictures, and
artists who concentrated on illustration.
At the time, picturebooks were rarely produced in print runs of more than 2 000.
These were often what we would perhaps
now term coffee-table books, large format
hardbacks, which therefore only reached
the educated bourgeoisie. However, the
many Christmas magazines of the period,
with a circulation of sometimes 200 000,
enabled illustrators to reach a wider audience. These Christmas magazines placed
great emphasis on illustrations, and artists
such as Carl Larsson, Ottilia Adelborg
and Jenny Nyström were frequent
contributors.
The concept of picturebooks was established in Sweden as early as about 1860,
when it became possible to print picturebooks reasonably easily and cheaply. By
picture book here we are talking about
books with one or more illustrations on
each spread.
One very popular picture reproduction
technique in the 19th century was wood-
cuts, or xylography, and lithography was
also used. Towards the end of the 19th
century photomechanical methods had
become considerably cheaper and it became possible to develop inks by chemical
means. This revolutionised colour printing, making illustrations considerably
more cost-efficient to produce.
Picturebooks and other media
The modern picturebooks of our day
must be seen in conjunction with the way
media have developed. Picturebooks, and
children’s books in general, are only one
of several media that tell stories to children today. Statistics available show that
children and young people are reading less
than they used to. However, while they
may be reading fewer printed books than
before, they are reading in other ways.
They play computer games and chat,
the internet is part of daily life even for
very young children. Children encounter
the stories and characters in children’s
books through TV and video, through
audiobooks, in comics, through drama
and theatre or in songs. Most children
these days will get to know a character
like Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking
through films, recordings and songs rather
than through the three books about Pippi
that were published in the 1940s.
Children’s access to
literature
Books specially designed for children have
been published since the 16th century in
Sweden. For a long time, children and
young people, often in the company of
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adults, were entertained by literature that
was not intended for them at all, such as
chapbooks and broadsides. Besides literacy, being able to read books also depends
on having the time and an opportunity to
read. Literacy increased when compulsory
schooling was introduced in 1842. However, children’s books were an expensive
purchase and only a few well-off parents
could afford to buy books for their children. Consequently it took time before all
children had the opportunity to encounter
literature in the form of picturebooks and
stories. It was not until the 20th century that children’s libraries run by local
authorities began to emerge. Sweden’s first
children’s library opened in Stockholm in
1911. Nor should we forget that children
were an important part of the industrial
and agricultural workforce and far from all
children were permitted to sit with their
nose in a book purely for entertainment.
Picturebooks, like other literature, express
standards and values that tell us something
about contemporary opinions on children
and their place in society. Older picturebooks tended to be improving, moral tales.
One example is Ottilia Adelborg’s picturebook Pelle Snygg och barnen i Snaskeby, 1896
(Clean Peter and the Children of Grubbylea,
1901), partly inspired by Heinrich Hoffmann’s Struwwelpeter from 1845. In Adelborg’s book, a paean to cleanliness, we
learn how the neat and tidy Clean Peter,
representing the expectations of the adult
world, comes to Grubbylea, where the
children play in the dirt. With Peter’s
arrival, neatness and order are imposed.
The children no longer shun soap and
water. The book about Clean Peter was
published after 1900 in the UK, Germany
and Holland, making it one of few Swedish picturebooks to make a breakthrough
outside Sweden at the time.
Swedish literature for
Swedish children
A milestone in the history of Swedish
picturebooks, Jenny Nyström’s Barnkammarens bok, 1882 (The Nursery Book)
represents the dawn of authentically
Swedish picturebook publishing. Appreciative reviews drew attention to the fact
that this was a Swedish work, emphasising
a Swedish setting and Swedish traditions,
unlike all the foreign books that had previously dominated the market. The pictures in most illustrated books had been
taken from the foreign editions or were
printed abroad. With its popular poems
and rhymes, Barnkammarens bok, however, was Swedish through and through.
Some of its rhymes, characterised by the
nationalism and national romanticism of
the period, live on to this day. Due to the
many illustrations, printed in four colours,
the book was quite expensive to buy and
never reached a wide readership.
At the time Barnkammarens bok was published, Jenny Nyström had completed her
training at the Swedish Academy of Fine
Arts in Stockholm and had started studying in Paris. In 1875 she had illustrated
Lille Viggs äfventyr på julafton (Little Vigg’s
Adventure on Christmas Eve, 1981) by Viktor
Rydberg, and from the 1880s onwards she
was one of the most popular illustrators
of children’s books in Sweden. She was a
regular contributor to the many Christmas
magazines published at the time. Today she
is probably best remembered as an adept
illustrator of Christmas cards. Nyström is
also an example of the many women with
a sound artistic training, spanning studies
at the Swedish Academy and abroad, who
came to work in the sphere of children’s
books in the years around 1900. Another
early example of a Swedish picturebook
artist is Nanna Bendixson, who also
trained at the Swedish Academy. In 1886
she published Skogstomten (The Forest
Goblin) about two children who set off
into the forest. The detailed illustrations
point towards Art Nouveau with their
decorative tendrils of flowers, a style that
entered the realm of picturebook illustration as the 19th century drew to a close.
Other picturebook artists who were
trained at different art schools in Sweden
and abroad include Ottilia Adelborg, Maj
Bring and Mollie Faustman. In the 1880s
and 1890s Adelborg produced about ten
picturebooks and can thus be said to
be Sweden’s first real picturebook artist.
In terms of illustration she drew her inspiration from the French artist Boutet de
Monvel and from English illustrators such
as Kate Greenaway and Walter Crane. At
the same time she had a strong interest in
Nordic folk art, which together with her
international outlook gave her pictures
their distinctive character.
Aesthetic upbringing of the
child in the foreground
At the turn of the century, around 1900,
interest in children’s literature was growing
and the development of the picturebook
was closely linked to the women’s movement, the public education movement
and the interest of national romanticism
in folklore. The aesthetic upbringing of
children became a central concern and
the books were not primarily meant to
be didactic, but to provide an experience
of beauty. In 1897 art historian Carl G.
Laurin, who thought that school teaching
of the time was putting “emotion, imagination and beauty on a starvation diet”.
Under the slogan “art in schools” he
worked to ensure that schools were decorated with works of art so that children
from all groups in society could have an
opportunity to see and experience art.
The cultural democracy focus of the
period was represented by those including the Swedish feminist author Ellen
8
Key who, with her epoch-making work of
1900, Barnets århundrade (The Century of the
Child, 1909), came to have a great influence on the view of children and children’s
reading. Her slogan “beauty for all” also
included books that were to be placed in
the hands of children. Key opposed the
moralising and tendentious books of the
period, instead emphasising the importance of every child being free to develop at their own pace. She prophetically
spoke about the new human who would
be shaped by an upbringing essentially
different from the authoritarian drilling to
which children of the time were subjected.
For Key, like many others, it was important
for children from all social classes to be
able to encounter art and literature even
at an early age. To this end, Barnbiblioteket
Saga (the Children’s Saga Library) was
launched in 1899, publishing classics
illustrated by well-known artists in series
of pamphlets which sold for just about ten
penny each.
One of the few picturebooks from this
period that, alongside Elsa Beskow’s
books, became a perennial classic is Ivar
Arosenius’s Kattresan from 1909 (The Cat
Journey). In deceptively simple verses and
scaled down pictures, it tells the story of
Lillan’s expedition out into the world on
the back of a cat.
Women advance
The picturebook artist who has left a huge
mark on much of Swedish picturebook
publishing in the 20th century is Elsa
Beskow. From her debut in 1897 with Sagan
om den lilla, lilla gumman (The Tale of the
Wee Little Old Woman, 1936) she was productive right up until 1952, the year before
she died and in which the picturebook
Röda bussen och gröna bilen (Red Bus, Green
Car) was published. Some of the most
characteristic features of Beskow’s picturebook art are her intimate knowledge of
the Nordic landscape and her reassuring
depiction of the environment, in which
cheerful adventures were mixed with not
too terrifying danger. The books’ values
elsa beskow
From Annika (1941)
and social outlook have sometimes faced
criticism and during the 1970s there was
discussion of the bourgeois ideology and
the view of male and female that the books
conveyed with a father who is “strong and
brave” and a mother who is “gentle and
sweet”. We meet parents like this in Tomtebobarnen (Elf Children of the Woods, 1932 new
edition Children of the Forest) first published
in Swedish in 1910.
The assumption that children should be
helpful and obedient was long an axiom,
and this ideal is also promoted in some of
Beskow’s books. The girl Annika in Annika,
1941 helps her mother and is always
willing to lend a hand. She mops the floor,
lays the table and chases flies away from
the family cow, all with the same contentedly happy expression and all shown in
realistic true-to-nature pictures. In other
9
books by Beskow the children are given a
relatively large amount of freedom. They
are enterprising and hard working but also
have time for games. In picturebooks and
in educational debate at this time we can
discern a shift between teachers who emphasise the importance of rules and fixed
standards and others who assert the child’s
needs to be able to develop in freedom
and in line with their own individuality.
john bauer
From Bland tomtar och troll (1909)
10
At the end of the 19th and start of the
20th century, women, as we have seen,
had gained considerable ground as authors
and illustrators of children’s books. About
75 per cent of the children’s books in
Sweden published for the first time in
the last decades of the 19th century were
written by women. It is interesting to
note that women were in the majority as
authors and illustrators of picturebooks.
Many of the female picture book artists
of the late 19th and early 20th century had
trained abroad. Mollie Faustman, who
was taught by Matisse, was inspired by the
then modern decorative style with large
expanses and clear colours. In her picturebook Malins midsommar, 1910 (Malin’s
Midsummer) one of the illustrations shows
elves dancing in a ring, a composition
strikingly similar to that of Matisse’s
painting La Danse from the same year.
The step out into the public world was
made easier if the women chose to focus
on children and establish themselves in the
children’s book market, where they did
not encounter the same amount of male
competition. Work that focused on children existed in the borderland between
the private and the public spheres. These
women kept one foot in the home, the
domain considered to be the woman’s
rightful place. Illustrating children’s
books also became an important source
of income for female artists.
Male artists at the time include Einar
Nerman. Like Faustman he had studied
with Matisse and also trained at the school
of the artists’ association Konstnärsförbundet. A recognised portrait painter of
the day, he also created some picturebooks. His first, in 1911, was Kråkdrömmen (The Crow Dream), a tale about the
animals at Stockholm’s open-air museum
and zoo Skansen, who liberate themselves
from imprisonment, occupy the city and
put the humans in cages. Nerman’s satirical
depiction can be described as Orwell’s
Animal Farm in picturebook form.
Another male artist working in the first
decades of the 20th century is John Bauer.
He studied at the Royal Swedish Academy
of Fine Arts from 1900 to 1903 and was a
very popular fairytale illustrator until his
death in a drowning accident in 1918. The
mystery of nature, depicted in his dark,
magical forests, moss-encrusted rocks and
tall pine trunks characterises his imagery.
However, it is perhaps the troll, rough
and clumsy, that has become Bauer’s most
enduring creation, inspiring a number of
other illustrators. The troll, often shown
in the foreground, is almost one with the
grey stones and knotty branches of the
mighty forest. The mystery of nature in
John Bauer’s illustrations is reinforced by
the figures of princesses bathed in ethereal
light, standing out against the gloom of
the forest. Bauer mainly created illustrations for the popular Christmas publication Bland tomtar och troll (Among Elves
and Trolls), which started to be published
in 1907.
The ABC – a genre with
deep roots
Picturebooks can incorporate a number of
different genres such as fairytales, everyday
stories or depictions of historical events.
One of the oldest picturebook genres is
the ABC, published in a number of different variants. One example dating back to
the 18th century is the ABC in honour of
the son of the former Swedish King Gustaf
III, the future King Gustav IV Adolf, on
his second birthday in 1780. The text was
written by Johan Wellander following
the pattern of the German philanthropist
Christian Felix Weisse, and Jacob Gillberg,
professor in drawing at the Royal Swedish
Academy of Fine Arts, drew the pictures
which he also engraved. The rhymes for
the different letters aim to highlight the
virtue of the future monarch.
The 19th century saw the start of the transformation of the ABC from a textbook
and a tool for learning to read into entertainment. In Prinsarnes blomsteralfabet, 1892
(The Princes’ Flower Alphabet) Ottilia
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Adelborg combines children, flowers and
letters to create a charming whole. She
may have drawn some inspiration from
Walter Crane’s Flora’s Feast, 1889 with its
elegant flowers. In 1904 artist Arthur
Sjögren’s book ABC Djur (Animals) with
text by Anna Maria Roos was published.
The book had the subtitle, typical of its
period, “Picturebook for good children”.
Einar Nerman also produced a book in
Sjögren’s footsteps, Djur ABC för snälla
barn, 1931 (Animal ABC for Good Children). A humorous and playful ABC
with text by skilled rhyme-smith Britt G.
Hallqvist and pictures by ceramic artist
Stig Lindberg came out in 1951. At letter
N we read of the nose that “curves downwards or up / often ends with a drip”.
The English nonsense tradition, illustrated
by expressive and humorous pictures,
takes Swedish form in Lennart Hellsing
and Poul Ströyer’s ABC from 1961, while
Lena Andersson harks back to the tradition
of Ottilia Adelborg and Elsa Beskow in
Majas alfabet, 1984 (Maja’s Alphabet). Here
we find a well-developed feel for nature,
plants and trees drawn in gentle pastels.
Eva Lundgren’s ABC Magic, Cilla &
Baby – ramsor om tjejer, killar och grejer, 2007
(Magic, Cilla & Baby – Rhymes about
Girls and Boys and Stuff) questions and
highlights the problems with prevailing
assumptions about gender. Different types
of families are depicted and the letter Q
is illustrated by a contemporary rainbow
family. Another ABC with a difference is
the prize-winning Nina Ulmaja’s A B C
å allt om D, 2012 (A B C and all about D).
The book offers a fascinating journey
into the world of letters, providing lots
of information about the history of the
alphabet in pictures and text.
Social change reflected
in the picturebook
The development of the picturebook in
the 20th century reflects the social changes
which took place in society. The 1930s was
a decade of unemployment and a new
approach in the debate about children’s
clown
cykel
citron
el
l och cyk
itron, cirke
c
i
S
L.
m
O
s so
och CO
C uttala
, Camilla
n
w
lo
c
i
K
och som
coolt!
säger den fett co
ole som gillar nå
t
nina ulmaja
12
From A B C å allt om D (2012)
inger and lasse sandberg
From Lilla Anna och de mystiska fröna (1972)
Långa Farbrorn gick till Lilla Annas hus.
”Hej! Här kommer jag med en present till dej.
En hel påse full med Överraskningsfrön!
Har du några krukor och lite jord
så vi kan sätta dom?”
”Jag har många krukor”, sa Anna.
”Kom in en bit så får du se.”
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conditions. When the Social Democratic
Party won the election in 1932 they
launched several reforms. Homes started
to be built to reduce family overcrowding
with a reduction in rent for larger families,
and childcare facilities were run by the
housing cooperative HSB. The childcare
staff were mainly trained at the Social
Pedagogical Institute founded by the
Swedish politician Alva Myrdal in Stockholm. The new theories of preschool
education drew its inspiration from the
English education reformer A. S. Neill, and
the fundamental idea was that children
should be allowed to develop freely and
choose their own activities.
Picturebooks for younger children have
taken on an important role in the range
of picture books available since the 1930s.
They are often small in format, with
minimal text and simple pictures but
nevertheless tell a coherent story.
The first board books were also launched
in the 1930s. Initially these were mainly
translations from English, and Sweden
had to wait until the 1960s and 1970s
before Swedish board books began to be
published to any large degree. At that time
picturebooks for younger children were
published to a greater extent than before,
including Inger and Lasse Sandberg’s
books about Daniel (Långa farbrorn,
editor’s note) and Little Anna, and Gunilla
Wolde’s books about Thomas (Totte,
editor´s note). These were books designed
with an educational purpose in mind, describing children’s daily lives and helping
them to understand concepts. More recent
picturebook illustrators who are creating
books for very young children include
Ann Forslind, Anna-Clara Tidholm, Emma
Virke and Stina Wirsén.
New media
The mass production of children’s books
first took off in the early 1930s, and this
can be seen as a new media situation. At
the same time that Walt Disney’s reworking of old fairytales such as Cinderella and
Snow White and of classics like Pinocchio
and Alice in Wonderland were being shown
as films, a number of picturebooks were
published about the same characters in
Swedish translation. Two pictorial media
for children, films and books, thus reinforced each other, with films undoubtedly
contributing the picturebooks reaching a
wider audience. Towards the end of the
Second World War in 1945 the range of
children’s books available changed with
the emergence of the growing welfare
state. Families became central and “the
modern project”, as it was known, included several initiatives focused on children
including the introduction of Swedish
child benefit in 1947.
An educational theory of freedom began
to gain ground. A desire for rebellion,
humour and nonsense became important
elements in picturebooks, in terms of text
and illustrations. The child’s everyday
world, often in an urban environment,
took centre stage. In the picturebooks
Peter och Kajan på långresa (Hide and Seek
Voyage, 1953), first published in Swedish in
1946, and Peter är barnvakt, 1949 (Peter the
Babysitter), the cinematographer Erling
Gunnar Fischer paints detailed pictures of
back yards, blocks of flats and ports. But
the idyll lived on and Sweden’s isolation from the rest of Europe during the
Second World War created fertile ground
for the theme of Swedishness. Several
books about the out-air museum and zoo
Skansen were published, including På
Skansen med Per och Stina, 1943 (At Skansen
with Per and Stina) by the prolific Maj
Lindman. Here the children not only look
at the bears at the zoo but also admire the
folk dancers in their national costume.
A new approach could be distinguished in
children’s books. Authors and artists exhibited solidarity with the child, depicting
the world from a child’s perspective. The
best-known exponent of the new, free
and competent child is Astrid Lindgren’s
Pippi Långstrump (Pippi Longstocking, 1950)
published for the first time in 1945. She
14
made her voice heard properly, saw
through the dishonesty of the adult world
and challenged norms and rules. Ingrid
Vang Nyman’s illustrations have given us
the picture of this resplendent girl with
her red plaits sticking out at the sides of
her head. In terms of style, Vang Nyman’s
illustrations have elements of the naivety
and primitivism that characterise several
artists of the 1940s.
One of the key figures involved in giving
Swedish children’s literature a new lease
of life is Lennart Hellsing. In his picturebook universe, where Krakel Spektakel
and Kusin Vitamin respectively swing and
hang from the curtains, freedom prevails.
Hellsing has had the ability to collaborate
with a number of prominent illustrators
such as Fibben Hald, Kerstin Hedeby,
Ulrica Hydman-Vallien, Tommy Östmar,
Gunna Grähs, Charlotte Ramel and
Peter Dahl. He has not only turned to
established picturebook illustrators but
also sought out artists active in other
fields. Unique in this respect is the picturebook Kanaljen in seraljen, 1956 (The Scamp
in the Seraglio) in which a number of
well-known artists such as Sven Eriksson,
Roland Kempe, Stellan Mörner, Endre
Nemes and Olle Olsson Hagalund created
illustrations for Hellsing’s imaginative
rhymes.
From the 1950s onwards picturebook
publishing expanded considerably.
Special series of picturebooks were published, cartoon albums were launched and
co-operation with foreign publishers on
joint printing became increasingly common. The publication of FIB’s Gyllene
Böcker (Golden Books) began in 1950
and 217 titles were published in the series
until 1964 with illustrators including Einar
Norelius, Kerstin Hedeby and Gustaf
Tenggren. Klumpe Dumpe-biblioteket
(The Klumpe Dumpe Library), published
in 1956–1973, was an initiative by publisher Rabén & Sjögren aimed at producing cheap picture books of high artistic
and technical quality, primarily for
ingrid vang nyman
15
From Känner du Pippi Långstrump? text by Astrid Lindgren (1947)
younger children. Illustrators included
Harald Wiberg, Ilon Wikland, Kerstin
Thorvall and Kaj Beckman. Many picturebook artists who would work for many
more decades made their debut in the
1950s. These include Inga Borg, Ulf
Löfgren and Inger and Lasse Sandberg.
Tove Jansson also made her debut as a
picture book artist in 1952 with Hur gick
det sen? Boken om Mymlan, Mumintrollet och
Lilla My (The Book About Moomin, Mymble
and Little My, 1965).
Ideology more important
than aesthetics
From the closed idyll of the domestic nursery to the open collective in day nurseries
and public preschools. This briefly sums
up the development of the picturebook
during the 20th century, in terms of the
books’ content and the environment in
which they are set. But the true picture is
more subtle and more detailed than that.
In the 1960s and 1970s children’s literature
was radicalised under the influence of the
Left. The debate became more heated,
children’s books were politicised with the
spotlight more on ideology than aesthetics.
Even young children needed to be informed about how the world functioned.
Picturebooks were published about
environmental destruction, the Vietnam
War and about political conflicts in South
Africa. The concept of culture was expanded and the climate was open to new
ideas and experiments. Protest cultures
followed each other and pop art made its
breakthrough.
The mass media and entertainment culture
came to influence the traditional arts and
one important aim was to create art and
literature in which children and adults
could come together. The fashion was
for an ideal of “all ages” and there was an
increasing interest in children’s literature
and children’s lives. Children’s books were
discussed in the press and became an
subject for research and teaching. The
Swedish Institute for Children’s Books
opened in 1967, and children’s literature
became a subject that could be studied at
university.
The picturebooks were often realistic
depictions of everyday lives, with blocks
of flats and broken families as common
subjects. The illustration technique
changed and picturebook artists were
inspired by the art of advertising. Many
illustrators came from the world of
magazines, and stylistically there were
not a great gap between a picturebook
illustration and an illustration in a weekly
magazine. Picturebook illustrators Monica
Schoultz and Kerstin Thorvall had both
worked for the weekly press. The image of
the child changed, with illustrators such as
Eva Eriksson and Gunna Grähs helping
to erase the previous archetype of the sweet
little child. Their characters unambiguously express their emotions and sometimes
have a hint of the grotesque about them.
Examples include Eva Eriksson’s stories
about Rosalie and Viktor (Bella och
Gustav, editor’s note) such as Tandresan
eller när Bella tappade en tand (The Tooth
Trip, 1985), first published in Swedish
in 1979, and Gunna Grähs’ books about
Jullan, e.g. Jullan vill vara med, 1982 (Jullan
Wants to Come Too).
The major social changes of the post-war
period also brought greater international
awareness and increased democracy. New
norms and social behaviour developed.
Care of children, the elderly and the
sick increasingly shifted from the home
to institutions. The first depiction of a
preschool is found in Siv Widerberg and
Kaj Beckman’s Gertrud på daghem, 1966
(Gertrud at Preschool). The book can be
seen as reportage for young children in
the form of a picturebook. It highlights
the positive things about going to preschool, entirely in tune with the prevailing
ideology of the time. The children learn
from the preschool community and a day
at home ill with mummy is “really boring” in Gertrud’s view. The conflicts and
difficulties that everyday life at preschool
also involved were not addressed in
16
picturebooks until the 1970s. In the 1980s
Siv Widerberg and Cecilia Torudd’s books
about the preschool Rödmyran (the first
was published in 1981) provide scope for
children’s aggression and anger. Fights
and arguments are shown in pictures and
in text. Flickan som inte ville gå till dagis,
1986 (The Girl Who Didn’t Want to go to
Preschool) by Widerberg and Torudd is an
illustrative title in this context.
New images of women and
new parenting
In the 1960s women’s liberation was discussed, as were unequal relations between
men and women. The debate also continued in the picturebooks, such as Mamman
och pappan som gjorde arbetsbyte, 1970 (The
Mum and Dad who Swapped Jobs) by
Sonja Åkesson and Monica Schoultz. “A
fun book to talk seriously about”, thought
the reviewer in the swedish newspaper
Dagens Nyheter. New family patterns and
new roles for men and women were made
clear in picturebooks. Divorced parents
became increasingly common, in reality
and in picturebooks. A single mother and
her life with her daughter is depicted in
Kerstin Thorvall and Monica Schoultz’
picture books Sara, 1975 and Mer om
Sara, 1977 (More about Sara). And in her
popular books about Alfie Atkins (Alfons
Åberg, editor’s note), first published in
1972, Gunilla Bergström tells stories about
a boy and his single father. Daddy Atkins
stood for a new male role – the hands-on,
caring dad mostly seen in the kitchen,
cooking, doing laundry, reading stories
and putting his son to bed.
A prominent tendency in the picture
books of recent decades is that parents are
less authoritative and depicted as individuals with their own problems and difficulties. One example is Barbro Lindgren
and Eva Eriksson’s books about the wild
baby (the first was published in 1981). The
wild baby is an energetic and obstreperous
child who almost wears its mother out.
The portrait of the mother is innovative
on a psychological level. She is no stereo-
typical mother figure, but very much a
person in her own right. She carries out
her domestic duties and plays an attentive
role in the baby’s games, but at the same
time is an independent individual with her
own dream world and her own identity
separate from her role of mother.
Several picturebooks provide samples of
a more aesthetic focus and an expanded
concept of realism. These include Anna
Höglund’s poetically expressive picturebooks which can be interpreted on several
levels. Her women and mother characters
are interesting from the point of view of
gender. Resor jag aldrig har gjort av Syborg
Stenstump, 1992 (Journeys I Have Never
Made by Syborg Stenstump) depicts a
single woman in a tough financial situation.
But in her dreams and imagination she can
assert herself and develop strength and
initiative. Women’s lives are also the theme
of Höglund’s books about the two teddy
bears Mina and Kåge, which was first
published in 1995. In condensed form, as
if in a chamber play, powerful emotions
and timeless relationship patterns between
women and men are depicted with great
drama. The unit of the action and the
space is strictly observed in the stories
built up scenically, which show how
women’s search for identity and femininity
as a social construction can be delineated
in picturebook form. This might be seen
as far from the world of the child, but fear
of separation, of being alone and abandoned, is something that affects children
and adults, whatever their sex.
Children of today seem to be liberating
themselves from childhood and taking on
adult behaviour at an increasingly early
age. Childishness and youth is extending into adult life and the adult world is
seeping down into childhood. Children
in general ask more questions and are
more aware of their rights and their role
in the family is different from in the past.
One trend is that many children today
are forced to become competent and take
on adult responsibility at an early age. In
their picturebooks packed with symbolism, Anna-Clara and Thomas Tidholm
highlight the tension between the reality
of the adult and the child, starting with
Resan till Ugri-La-Brek, 1987 (The Journey
to Ugri-La-Brek) which attracted a great
deal of attention. Snälla barn, 2007 (Good
Children) depicts complicated family relationships and the family’s constant battle
to juggle work, children and marriage. The
threat of marital breakdown and a father’s
icy loneliness are shown from the naive
perspective of a little sister. In this family
it is the children who provide the strength
and console the adults. The book’s title
“Good children” has a double meaning. In
what way are the children good? In silently accepting the capriciousness and uncertainty of the adult world? The questions
are not answered, but are present under
the surface. Does a protected and sheltered land of childhood exist anymore?
Greater awareness of
pictures as a medium
In recent decades the picturebook has become more multifaceted and advanced in
terms of form, often with a “double” audience, also incorporating the adult. Greater
attention is being paid to the picture as
a narrative medium, and the interaction
between text and illustration is in more
depth than before. The debate emphasises
the similarities between the picturebook
and other media such as music, opera,
theatre, video and cartoons. The cartoon
form and the collage technique are used
by Jockum Nordström in his books about
Sailor and Pekka. The first of these was
published in 1993. Nordström, who works
in a naive absurd style, poses his characters in a grotesque, exaggerated manners
a reminiscent of children’s drawings. The
minimal text is almost entirely in simple sentences and much of the story is
conveyed by the pictures. There are no
children in Nordström’s books. Instead
the main characters are a sailor and a dog.
Eva Lindström’s complex picturebooks
also erase all kinds of boundaries, between
children and adults, humans and animals,
17
imagination and reality. However the
books revolve around the same themes:
loneliness, waiting and everyday magic.
One of the most flourishing elements in
Swedish picturebooks is the depiction
of children of today, how and where they
live. With a realism firmly rooted in the
everyday life, the Swedish picturebook
stands out from the majority of picturebooks in other European countries. A more
psychologically focused realism has developed and the social realism of earlier
decades has been toned down. Social
criticism is instead conveyed with the
help of humour and farce that might be
explained by the fact that several picturebook artists such as Gunna Grähs and
Cecilia Torudd have a background in the
cartooning tradition.
A strong sense for nature gives Swedish
picturebooks their distinctive stamp,
particularly internationally. Here a line can
be drawn from The National Romantic
movement and Elsa Beskow’s picturebooks
of the early 20th century with their idyllic
evocations of fields, forests and meadows,
to Lena Andersson’s picturebooks with
their careful studies of flowers, trees and
fruit. Sven Nordqvist’s books about the
old man Pettson and his cat Findus also
fit into this tradition. The books about
Pettson are also examples of the picturebook as a way of depicting the folk tradition and rural life. With a streak of magic
realism and nostalgia they also show how
life in the Swedish countryside used to be,
with red cottages, fields and meadows and
the deep green of the forest in the background.
The back to the land movement developed
amid The National romantic movement of
the late 19th and early 20th century saw
a resurgence in the 1970s. At that time,
however, enthusiasm for folk culture
developed on the Left or in alternative
movements such as the women’s movement and the environmental movement,
not, as in the early 20th century, among
the bourgeoisie. People were looking for
their roots and drawing on their own reality and their own history. Ann-Madeleine
Gelotte published a trilogy about her own
childhood and that of her mother and her
grandmother. In Ida Maria från Arfliden,
1977 (Ida Maria from Arfliden), Tyra i
10:an på Odengatan, 1981 (Tyra at number
10 Odengatan) and Vi bodde i Helenelund,
1983 (We Lived in Helenelund) we explore
the childhood environments of three
generations of women in detailed pictures
and realistic descriptions. The titles of the
books alone convey the history of the home.
The gender debate in
picturebooks
In the early 21st century a gender debate
took place in the Swedish media about
the depiction of boys and girls in picturebooks. Boys dominated as the main character in numerical terms, and were often
depicted as tough and mischievous, while
the girls were good and obedient. This
was also the case when the main characters
were animals made human, as is often the
case in picture books. Barbro Lindgren
(text) and Olof Landström (illustrations)
show the adventures of a little boy pig
in Nämen Benny, 1998 (Benny’s Had
Enough, 1999) and its sequels, while Eva
Eriksson tells the story of a girl pig in the
picturebooks Malla handlar, 1998 (Molly
Goes Shopping, 2005) and Molly cyklar, 2003
(A Crash Course for Molly, 2005). These
humorous books show a very traditional
gender pattern. The pigs are in no way
gender neutral. Despite the fact that the
structure of the books is similar, involving
a journey out into the world, followed
by a safe return home, the behaviour of
the little pigs differs depending on their
sex. Benny leaves his home angry, he is in
revolt against parental power, acts on his
own authority and serves as an example
of male independence. He is a rebellious
individualist with a dawning male urge to
explore the world.
Molly, on the other hand is focused
on relationships, wants to do as she is
told and is an obedient helpmate to her
mother, who is constantly a protective
figure in the background as Molly goes
to the shop by herself. When it all goes
wrong she is consoled on her grandma’s
reassuring knee and there is unbroken eye
contact between the two of them. Benny
is independent in a completely different
way, and his mother has not even noticed that he has gone out alone. He has a
considerably larger radius for action than
Molly, who moves in an intimate zone, in
the private sphere. The choice of colours
in the books can also be studied from a
gender perspective. Landström uses clear
and distinct colours throughout. The sharp
red colours emphasise Benny’s rebellious
nature, while Eva Eriksson works in a
colour scale of gentle yellows and greens,
drawing her backdrops and figures with
curving soft lines and shapes. Considering
that it is mainly women who are children’s
book illustrators, this might be seen as
surprising. However, the traditional pattern of male
behaviour seems to be increasingly
questioned in the world of picturebooks.
Strong, determined girls appear here
alongside boys who are both insecure
and anxious. Many female picture book
creators link their works to the gender
debate. Pija Lindenbaum in Gittan och
gråvargarna, 2000 (Bridget and the Grey
Wolves, 2008) shows how the scared and
not particularly brave Bridget gets lost in
the forest and wins safety and self-confidence by means of games and her imagination. Her encounter with the grey wolves
can be read in the light of the story of Red
Riding Hood. In Lindenbaum’s Kenta och
Barbisarna, 2007 (Kenta and the Barbies)
the story is about a boy who plays football
and also likes playing with Barbie dolls.
In 2002 Eva Bergström and Annika
Samuelsson published the first book in
a series about the little girl cat Snurran,
Snurran och den osande abborren (Snurran
and the Smelly Perch). Snurran is a girl
cat with attitude. No shrinking violet,
18
pija lindenbaum
19
From Kenta och Barbisarna (2007)
bettina johansson
20
From Kivi och monsterhund (2012)
she makes her voice heard and is furious
when she doesn’t get her own way. A girl
cat who so ruthlessly asserts herself and
stands her ground aroused irritation by
some critics who found it inappropriate
that Snurran is never told off for being
feisty and stroppy. One wonders whether
the same criticism would be received if the
books had been about a male cat. Kivi och
monsterhund, 2012 (Kivi and Monster Dog)
by Jesper Lundqvist and Bettina Johansson
introduced the swedish gender neutral
pronoun “hen” in a children’s book for the
first time. Kivi’s sex is unclear all the way
through the book, which means that both
boys and girls can identify with Kivi. The
book aroused a great deal of debate and
was both praised and condemned.
world. Books can build bridges between
children, helping them see that there are
more similarities between countries and
people than there are differences. Hazard’s
belief in the humanising effect of children’s
books has a bearing particularly in today’s
globalised and multicultural world. The
picturebook can play a major role in children’s cultural socialisation and give them
an understanding that culture today can
best be described as one of many voices.
Picturebooks bring with them important
cultural heritage, well worth passing on to
future generations.
Lena Kåreland
Professor, Uppsala University
The gender perspective is undoubtedly
addressed far more than the diversity perspective. Even though diversity is represented the main and secondary characters
are primarely white and middle-class.
However, many children’s book illustrators
appear to be seeking to meet the demands
of equality and diversity. It is also interesting to note that if the picturebook of the
late 19th and early 20th century was to be
Swedish and national, today we are keen
to highlight a multicultural Sweden.
This overview has shown that Swedish
children’s picturebooks of today are not
only for children. In their complexity, in
terms of pictures and text, they can be
read at an advanced age. Many picturebooks can simply be described as books
for all ages. It is by no means a bad thing
if an encounter with a picturebook is of
central importance for young children as
well as older ones. Pictures affect often
more than the text does. Pictures are
also an international language capable
of crossing national boundaries without
difficulty. The Frenchman Paul Hazard
stated in Books, Children and Men, 1932
that children’s books can give children
access to a world of the imagination that
everyone shares. The universal republic of
childhood includes all the children of the
21
The Jury’s Work
andreas berg
In the world of Swedish publishing, three
genres stand out: cookery books, crime
fiction and child-ren’s books. In a way,
that can be seen as a reflection of modern
Sweden. And of those, it’s the publication
of children’s books that instils the greatest
optimism. According to the Swedish
Institute for Children’s Books 1 747 books
for children and young adults were published in Sweden in 2011 (the statistics
available at the point of writing), 674 of
which were picturebooks. These figures
must be seen in proportion to Sweden’s
population of approximately 9 million.
Many of the titles are books in translation,
but over half of the picturebooks are
original Swedish publications. A rough
estimate shows that in the region of 5 000
Swedish picturebooks were published in
the last 20 years alone. Gaining an overview of the genre as a whole is an almost
impossible task, which explains why the
Swedish Arts Council chose to put together
such a large jury, comprising academics,
publishers and illustrators to choose which
illustrators should represent Sweden in
Bologna. We met for the first time on the
leap day (29 February) 2012. There were to
be a large number of meetings and long
debates ahead of us before we finalised
our list of Swedish illustrators at the end
of September. The result of the jury’s work
was announced on 20 November 2012.
I think everyone in the jury was happy
with the final list.
Picturebooks is a sensitive product. Sales
seem to be unusually affected by political
decisions, the economy and the birth rate.
The high points in Swedish publishing in
historical terms can be placed in direct
relation to the population curve – in
Sweden a large number of children
has always meant a good market – but
political decisions can also be seen as
having a direct impact. VAT, for example,
which affects the price, is an important
factor. In general terms it is easy to
understand that sales of picturebooks go
up when confidence in the future is high.
In other words, when times are good.
It must be said that Swedes have been
exceptionally fortunate in this respect
with a high quality children’s book production, throughout the 20th century
and on into the 21st.
All good picturebooks have two things in
common: a good story and good pictures,
but without publishers willing to take risks
there would be no books. Often it is the
publishers who bring authors and illustrators
together. The financial crisis that struck
Sweden in the early 1990s hit publishers
hard, causing them to be more cautious.
The jury’s choices reflect the way the
number of authors being published for
the first time fell in at that time, before
remaining at a low plateau for a number
of years. But times are changing and a
number of new publishers have recently
emerged, revitalising the market.
Almost a third of the illustrators representing Sweden in Bologna were born
in the 1980s. The number of publishers
bodes well for the future. This indicates
that we are at the dawn of a golden age
for Swedish picture books, which makes
our invitation to Bologna particularly
honourable.
22
But is it art?
Initially, as members of the jury we had to
set firm boundaries and draw up relevant
criteria. The decision that the selection
would focus on printed books at least
meant that the inclusion of new media was
not up for debate. The selection had to
be made on artistic grounds. In these days
it is not so easy to define what constitutes
art, but we did eventually reach consensus.
The first thing the jury managed to agree
on was a motto for our work: “A child
perspective”, a highly idealised view of
children that can be summarised as
follows: “All children are fundamentally
of equal worth and are equally good –
the differences are due to circumstances”.
Theses ideas where formed in the late 19th
century by writers including Ellen Key,
and echoes through the history of the
Swedish picturebook. Its power is largely
due to the influence educationalists and
teachers had on the development of the
picturebook. The ability of education
experts to persuade good writers, such
as Selma Lagerlöf and August Strindberg,
to write for children was also crucial.
Children’s books have a unique position
in Swedish society. These are the only
books that we can assume a lot of Swedes
have read and which can be used as
references in almost any context. Almost
everyone knows who Selma Lagerlöf´s
Nils Holgersson (The Wonderful Adventures
of Nils) and Ivar Arosenius’s Lillan (The Cat
Journey), Elsa Beskow’s Tomtebobarnen
(The Children of the Forest), Astrid Lindgren’s
Pippi Långstrump (Pippi Longstocking)
and Emil are, and many read about Barbro
Lindgren’s Loranga, Mazarin and Dartan-
jang. These are a set of independent literary
figures in stories about disobedient, but
also good-hearted and loyal, children in
secure and insecure family constellations.
It is through them that we understand
ourselves and each other. Children’s books,
their illustrations and their illustrators have
shaped the Swedish outlook on children
and children’s needs.
The power of
visual language
After having agreed on “A child perspective” as the starting point of our work, we
moved on to the nomination procedure,
a process which was allowed to take its
time. We talked about specific works for
every name added to the list – which
grew longer and longer. Finally we had
more than 80 names, which says something about the quality and width of
Swedish illustrators overall. Our discussions included comics and titles that can
be seen as art in their own right. From an
early stage, we excluded chapter books,
instead placing a premium on story-telling
through pictures. This means that we
chose not to include pure teaching materials, a genre which, it is true, has proud
traditions in Sweden and employs many
illustrators. I believe that we are all prepared to subscribe to Lennart Hellsing’s
statement: “All educational art is bad art,
but all good art is educational”.
We talked about the clear dominance of
women in the field and agreed that we
should confine ourselves to the situation
as it stands today. The shortlist does not
reflect an average of the Swedish population in terms of gender or ethnicity. The
jury discussed how to deal with this situation and decided that our task was not a
political one. To make a change, several
agents, among others the publishers and
the educational institutions, must work for
change, preferably supported by political
decisions. We also discussed Swedish
citizens working abroad and foreign citizens working in Sweden – we excluded
the former from the list but kept the latter.
The 31 illustrators selected to represent
Sweden in Bologna 2013 live and work in
Sweden. We have chosen illustrators who
have published important works in the
past twenty years and who are still active.
We can ask ourselves whether it is meaningful to talk about Swedish illustration
today, when all pictures are stored electronically and quickly can be transported
world wide at the touch of a mouse.
Personally I’m convinced that it is. The
way we read pictures is intimately connected to the way we understand language.
Every language incorporates metaphors
and their meaning is always changing. At
different periods in its history Swedish has
absorbed loan words from German,
French and English – in line with the fashion at the time – and Swedish as spoken
on the streets naturally incorporates borrowings from Romani, for example, with
more words increasingly coming in from
languages that immigrants have brought
with them from Africa and Asia.
It is said that there are 6 500 independent
languages in the world. According to the
UN there are about 300 countries. Almost
all states (with the exception of small island nations) have several languages within
23
their borders. For example, a significant
minority of the population of Finland have
Swedish as their mother tongue and Finnish, Yiddish, Meänkieli, Romani and Sami
all have the status of national minority
languages in Sweden. Where the population is stationary, the language is local. The
spoken and written language is affected by
climate, religion, history, culture and tradition, and so is the language of pictures.
There is no universal visual language,
whatever the global market players would
have us believe. While it may make things
more complicated for large companies,
we, the readers, have no cause to complain
about variety. For us, the opposite – a uniform market – is a greater threat to a diverse
children’s literature. Visual languages
develop in parallel with spoken and written
languages, and in exactly the same way, in
the way they are used. A language used by
many people is more dynamic and contains wider variation than a small language
used only by a few. The only language that
doesn’t change is a dead language.
Andreas Berg
Illustrator, lecturer and writer
24
Contemporary Swedish Illustrators
presented by annika gunnarsson, curator
moderna museet stockholm
25
Emma Adbåge
Emma Adbåge (born 1982) studied comic-strip drawing and illustration in Hofors, Sweden. She is a
book illustrator and author who illustrates both her own and other authors’ texts, as well as working on
commissions for clients such as educational and comic books publishers and newspapers.
In 2011, Emma Adbåge recieved the Silver Award in the Association of Swedish Illustrators and Graphic
Designers’ competition Kolla! for Leni är ett sockerhjärta, 2010 (Leni is a Sweetheart) in the category
“Illustration: Books”. That same year she also received the Sven Rydén Prize.
Website: www.emmaadbage.com
Photo: Richard Gustafsson
Sven’s day starts and ends with potatoes in Emma Adbåge’s picturebook Sven käkar mat, 2012 (Sven is Hungry), which takes Sven to
various places where there are things to eat. The story opens with Sven
sitting on an orange chair at one of the school canteen’s pale green
tables. The setting is unmistakeable and wonderfully caricatured.
At arm’s length from the apparently rather unamused Sven lies four big
yellow potatoes on a plate. No, he’d rather eat sweets from the shop
than potatoes. Some older girls take his liquorice shoelace, but they
fall victim to a bird that steals the shoelace and flies off. The smile on
the ice-cream figure is a silent comment on what goes unsaid. And this
type of wonderfully disarming interjection recurs throughout the tale.
Just like Sven, Leni is a child who is not amused by things that she
dislikes from the start. Naturally, Leni experiences a deeply jealous
rivalry when Olle plays with Kiran, the girl next-door, in Lenis Olle, 2012
(Leni’s Olle). With a range of facial expressions that would make a stand-up comedian green with envy,
Leni moves from expectation to restrained irritation and frustration via disgusted delight, when all three
end up playing with the slime and sticky toy that Leni has brought along. Leni, Olle and Kiran find each
other in the final picture, where they sit huddled together on the sofa under the classic designer shelf.
Emma Adbåge’s two picturebooks above are characterised by a finely attuned eye for detail that
informs both the scenography and the general design. The decor can, to some extent, be seen as a
lifestyle statement, but it also shows a stylistic confidence when it comes to graphic depictions. The
Swedish designer Gunilla Axén’s clouds, coupled with a wide range of other patterns, are a clear sign
of a designed environment, where items such as lamps, textiles and furniture indicate a form of contemporary reflection. The mix of references and the high degree of detail together make an interesting
distillation of contemporary life.
26
emma Adbåge
27
From Lenis Olle (2012)
28
29
emma Adbåge
From Sven käkar mat (2012)
Lisen Adbåge
Lisen Adbåge (born 1982) is an illustrator, cartoonist and author. Her work as an illustrator includes milk packaging,
children’s books and teaching materials. In 2004 she received the Children’s Book Jury Prize for
best children’s book in the age 0-6 category for Kan Man..?, 2004 (Can You?), written by Petter Lidbeck.
Website: www.lisenadbage.com
Photo: Gustaf Gustafsson
Lisen Adbåge’s images are packed with shape, colour and humour.
She works in a liberating way with patterns, references and stencils,
with stylised leaves, bold lines symbolising a loud noise, or a
chequered floor in red and white. There is also the classic forest,
usually so dark and impenetrable, which in Lisen Adbåge’s world
offers light and space between the mighty trees. The visuals are
bursting with colour, as a bold orange sky heavy with black rain
clouds is set against a red brick facade.
Lisen Adbåge’s figures are tenderly raw. Two eccentric characters are Kurt and Kio, each of whom have sausage-like hats
– Kurt on the vertical and Kio horizontal. In the book Kurt och Kio
vill ha koja, 2011 (Kurt and Kio Want a Cabin) they try out different
spaces that they hope will give that real feel of a den. Before they
find the right spot at home on the balcony, they try places that both
they and the reader see as hardly playful. In an abandoned car in
the forest or under the stairs in an apartment block it is neither cosy
nor comfortable, and it is also dark, so dark that they can’t see each other. However, the reader can see
Kurt’s thoughtful, and Kio’s angry eyes, in the black triangle that marks out the space under the stairs,
where they both sit and feel their way around.
In the book Stor-Emma, 2011 (Big-Emma) Lisen Adbåge uses a more contemporary colour palette,
with strongly coloured contours, to tell the story of what it is like to have to go with your family to a
dinner where the hosts’ daughter is older, bigger and mean. Naturally, it is exciting to curl up in BigEmma’s bunk bed and listen to music from Big-Emma’s ghetto blaster, but it is both scary and unpleasant
to be locked in with that loud noise – if nobody notices that you are gone. One horse after another
disappears in Grethe Rottböll’s counting story Tio vilda hästar, 2011 (Ten Wild Horses) illustrated by
Lisen Adbåge. In a pale landscape made up of pink mountains, blue lakes and mint-green land, the
frisky horses gallop around, apparently unmoved by the disappearance of their friends. Until it comes
to being the only one left.
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Lisen Adbåge
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From Kurt och Kio vill ha koja (2010)
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Lisen Adbåge
From Stor-Emma (2011)
Lisen Adbåge
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From Tio vilda hästar (2011)
Siri Ahmed Backström
Siri Ahmed Backström (born 1980) graduated from Konstfack (University College of Arts,
Crafts and Design) in Stockholm in 2011 with a Master’s degree in Storytelling (Graphic Design and Illustration).
Her degree project comprised five self-published picture books, two of which have since found publishers.
Godnatt (Good night), a pictorial story without text, was published in 2012 and Jag ska försöka beskriva dig
precis så fin som du är (I Will Try To Describe You Just As Precious As You Are) in 2011/2013.
Siri also runs the experimental picturebook project “Våra Vänner” (Our Friends) together with Karin Cyrén.
Website: www.siriahmedbackstrom.com
It starts with a black line that bends like a hook over the edge of
the page. This is a “noseish nose”, says the text in blue. And this
simplicity continues in Siri Ahmed Backström’s sublime picturebook Jag ska försöka beskriva dig precis så fin som du är, 2011/2013
(I Will Try to Describe You Just as Precious as You Are). The
story sensitively depicts the perception of a child’s outer and inner
space. It is a highly soulful portrayal, full of emotions and brought
to life by the sensuous line that has managed to capture the child’s
whole torso by the time it reaches the centrefold. On the back
cover, the torso is drawn from behind.
In the power of its simplicity, the language itself can evoke
images. The invented adjectival forms of the nouns, such as headish
and skinish, underline the sense of the corporeal, expressed as a
“bodyish, bodyish body” in the text. It can seem simplistic, playing
with the idea of a child’s linguistic development, but in Siri Ahmed Backström’s hands images and text
express how difficult it is to explain something as challenging as the feelings of a child. In the last picture
in the book, the child is lifted up with two hands. From the body language and the facial expression of
the child, it appears to tickle just enough to prompt a reproachful laugh from the pit of the stomach. But
readers have to form that picture in their own mind.
The picturebook contains an almost imperceptible movement in the child’s eyes. First they are
closed. Then they look to the right, to the left, and back to the right again. And then they look straight
up. Next, a pink cloud floats over the child’s head, which is cut so that only the very top can be seen.
The cloud is a manifestation of the child’s dreams and courage, and is turned into a pink balloon on the
next page. Graphically, the whole thing is clean and unforced. With only four colours – black, white,
blue and pink – something magnificent is created. In this finely crafted story, it is just as much what is
not in the pictures and text that makes up the description of how precious someone is.
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This and previous spread: From Jag ska försöka beskriva dig precis så fin som du är (2011/2013)
Anna Bengtsson
Anna Bengtsson (born 1951) is an illustrator, graphic designer, author and member of the Swedish Academy for Children’s Books.
She trained at Konstfack (University College of Arts, Crafts and Design ) in Stockholm. Illustration is her main focus, but since 1986
she has also worked with text and in 2008 she debuted with her novel Du ska vara spännande och varm (You Should Be Someone
Exciting and Warm). She has also made an animated film of her picturebook Bollongexpeditionen, 2003 (The Bolloon Expedition).
In 1994 Anna Bengtsson received the Elsa Beskow Plaque and in 2008 she was on the IBBY Honour List for
Det kittlar när löven kommer, 2006 (It Tickles When the Leaves Come Through).
Website: www.annabengtsson.se
Photo: Ulla Montan
In the winter, when the streetlights shine, the sky has the colour of a dark,
pinkish red. And to reach that colour, it may well have passed through the
misty grey-blue of the afternoon or the saturated ultramarine of the evening.
In her picturebook En hög med snö, 2012 (A Pile of Snow), Anna Bengtsson
stylishly reproduces the many colours of winter, as well as the shifting shades
and character of snow. Even the very feel of snow is portrayed with great
sensuousness. A snow-clad town is subdued and intimate, almost soft and
warm in all its chilliness. And by the time a big yellow digger lifts a whole
scoop of snow up to the sky, the snowflakes gently floating to the ground on
the cover have become a compact and heavy mass that later on melts in slushy rivulets as spring arrives.
As the seasons go through a costume change, the town and the countryside are clothed in a range
of outfits. Det kittlar när löven kommer, 2006 (It Tickles When the Leaves Come Through) is a story told
from the point of view of a tall 305 year-old oak. Daily life goes on beneath and around it: a trip out
for some children, two people on a park bench, a girl with a headscarf and her little brother, and a dad
camping with his daughter. All the while, the wind and weather change the appearance of the oak and
what goes on around it over the cycle of a year. All these little side stories carry on in the background.
Some are mentioned in the text, while others are simply there in the picture.
The story develops in a similar way for the girl Stella in Ny frisyr, 2011 (New Hairstyle). Stella has a
hair collection. Here the side stories are more of a quick visual insert, imparting interesting information
for the reader. When big brother Elton, who is a hairdresser like his mother, wonders where the red
hairbrush has gone, the alert reader knows that the dog Pudde walked off with it a long time ago.
Pudde’s groomed coat serves as inspiration for the regular customer Ellen Wadström’s hairstyle, as she
always wants something new whenever she comes to the salon. And then there is grandma, whose pretend
haircut turns into a real one. She looks just as angry afterwards as her granddaughter did at the thought
of having her hair cut. But once it’s done, the girl is beaming with happiness. In Anna Bengtsson’s books,
everything is in full colour, wonderfully opaque, clear and strong and in delightful combinations, which
makes the stories shine. The phrase “a picture paints a thousand words” takes on an extra dimension in
Anna Bengtsson’s picturebooks.
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From En hög med snö (2012)
anna bengtsson
From Ny frisyr (2011)
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Ida Björs
Ida Björs (born 1973) graduated from Konstfack (University College of Arts, Crafts and Design ) in 1999 with a Master of Fine Arts in
Graphic Design and Illustration. Since then she has been working as a freelance illustrator and produced art exhibitions,
containing paintings, folk costumes and knitted objects. As an illustrator, she has collaborated with various
newspapers and magazines, and on a number of book projects. Ida Björs was awarded a working grant
from the Swedish Arts Grants Committee 2008–2009.
Website: www.idabjorssuperillustration.se
Photo: Alex Pacheco
Den elektriska pojken från Arbrå, 2005 (The Electric Boy from Arbrå),
with text by Victoria Hammar, is based on a documented real-life story
about Zander Nord, known as “the electric boy”. On the pale blue
cover stands a boy with his hands clasped in front of him, wearing
a black suit, white shirt and tie. Around him glows an orange aura.
Zander was able to light himself up and was also called “the boy with
the mystical powers”. It was said that, through the power of thought,
he triggered phenomena that went against the laws of nature. Some
thought it was linked with the newfangled electricity that was installed
in homes around this time.
The settings in which the action takes place transport the reader
straight back into the early 20th century, when floors were laid with
wide boards, beds had heavy frames, tables had turned legs and wallpaper bore large patterns. On the flyleaf and endpaper, a magnificent
forest unfolds – a reference to Hälsingland, the province that Zander
Nord was born in. Tall spruces surround Zander as, like the trees, he sways in the wind that blows
through him in the opening of the book. He discovers that he is different one night in the dark. In a blue
striped nightshirt, he stands in the middle of the room, looking at his glowing foot. He stands between
an old woman, sleeping in a rocking chair, and an old man sleeping in a bed. In real life, Zander lived
with his grandparents at “the haunted farm” as it was known locally.
It is well documented that Zander had his supernatural powers studied. And just like in the picturebook, he was put on show. Zander stands on a green table, in the same suit as on the cover, looking
awkward and embarrassed. Next to him stands the old man, loudly proclaiming what the audience is
looking at – a young boy with supernatural powers. The depiction of the people and the settings is
lovingly detailed. Ida Björs combines the supernatural with the realistic through her delicate artistry,
and paints a hopeful picture of Zander, who at the end of the story hovers above a spruce, among pink
clouds and graceful garlands of flowers.
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From Den elektriska pojken från Arbrå (2005)
ida björs
This and previous spread: From Den elektriska pojken från Arbrå (2005)
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Karin Cyrén
Karin Cyrén (born 1984) gained a Master’s degree in Storytelling (Graphic Design and Illustration) from Konstfack (University College of
Arts, Crafts and Design ), Stockholm in 2011. She was also an exchange student at Tohoku University of Art and Design,
Yamagata, Japan in 2008–2009. She has illustrated the picturebooks Maraton, 2009 (Marathon), for which she received the Gold Award in
the Association of Swedish Illustrators and Graphic Designers’ competition Kolla! in 2010, and Paraplyresan, 2011 (The Umbrella Trip),
text by Håkan Jaensson and the young adult book Den nya flickan, 2012 (The New Girl), text by Kristian Fredén.
She runs the experimental picturebook project “Våra Vänner” (Our Friends) together with Siri Ahmed Backström.
She is currently working in Stockholm on a new book and exhibition projects.
Website: www.karincyren.com
Photo: Viet Cuong Truong
Like Hans Christian Andersen’s steadfast tin soldier, Kim sails away in an
umbrella in Paraplyresan, 2011 (The Umbrella Trip), with text by Håkan
Jaensson. This is a story on the theme of the grand odyssey. Kim journeys
around the world, from the cascade of water flowing out of the drainpipe
into forest streams and jungle rivers, across stormy seas, through a stinking
drain full of rats and straight up in the air using the umbrella as a parachute
– before finally walking home from the bakery, holding her mother’s hand.
It is a rich and colourful adventure, with the images relating details
such as the dog tied to the drainpipe, which becomes a giant hound with
its tongue dangling from its mouth, as tiny Kim sails away on the torrent
of water. Then the dog is small again, sitting on its hind legs and waving its
front paws in the air. When Kim is big, riding the umbrella after cars, whose drivers stare in amazement
when they see Kim’s mode of transport. On the final page, the rain is soaking the dog. It watches as Kim
and her mother walk away. And as for who owns the dog – we never find out.
The images form a suite of pictures, while other events unfold between the individual pages. In the
jungle there are wild animals, all of which stare greedily at Kim, who feels just as hungry as she thinks
the animals look. Kim also changes size. In the stormy seas, she becomes small and is carried into the
depths of the water, right under the foaming peak of a wave. The sea contains transparent jellyfish, red
corals, starfish, a fierce fish and an opening that leads into the sewer, where the plump, red-eyed and
savage rats live. Just before Kim lands back in the gutter, she sails past a number of buildings in yellow
and black spewing out grey smoke, and a damp cigarette floating in the water. Her mother’s big yellow
boots then bring the story back to reality. These shifts between large and small – exactly the way the
world is, and how it can feel when you’re standing waiting for a bun outside the bakery in the rain – are
beautifully executed, simple but full of feeling.
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karin Cyrén
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This and previous spread: From Paraplyresan (2011)
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Clara Dackenberg
Clara Dackenberg (born 1987) is studying at Högskolan för design och konsthantverk (School of Design and Crafts) in Gothenburg,
on the Design programme. Her work is founded in a conceptual visual language, bringing together text, letters, images, patterns and
materials. Nu eller kanske Mu – en kärlekshistoria, 2010 (Nu or Maybe Mu – A Love Story) marked
Clara Dackenberg’s debut as a children’s book illustrator.
Photo: Johan Gardfors
Nu and Mu are the same – or are they? Two monkey-like figures in
candy striped trousers and horizontally striped jumpers get lost in
each other and suddenly don’t know who is who. Nu eller kanske Mu
– en kärlekshistoria, 2010 (Nu or Maybe Mu – A Love Story), with text
by Johan Gardfors, is a subtle story about a You and an I who are
inextricably united as a (who are) We. The picturebook opens with
an extract from Swedish poet Werner Aspenström’s “You and I and
the World” from the poetry collection Trappan, 1964. It sets a subtle,
but clear tone for the elegant and slightly surreal story that follows.
In her pictures, Clara Dackenberg lets watercolour pigment soak
into the paper, spreading in splashes and stains to create a dense yet
airy space. She draws with a black pen and cuts out patterned paper,
making both a delicate and a strong impression. The mix of pale,
light colours and deep, dark shades flows through the story, as does
the beat of love, making certain images shine from within. Under a coral pink umbrella stand Mu and
Nu on marine blue land against a velvety black sky. Behind them, like intricate marquetry, lie different
patterns of colour that form a stylised tree. Another decorative addition is the dragonfly and the striped
caterpillars that have been placed like a circle around Mu and Nu. And even though Mu and Nu appear
so similar, they have completely different features.
Nor are they sick with love, perhaps more filled with the very distinctive feeling that love can bring.
But they still go to the doctor, a monkey doctor who, in a historically fascinating way, combines a range
of images of the doctor and the medicine man’s healing abilities. Around the doctor – wearing a white
coat and round spectacles, a sign of learning and cleverness – are all sorts of medically related accessories,
such as a mortar, pipette, hemostat, jug, funnel and magnifying glass, but there is also a feather, pincers
and a reel of cotton. Not surprisingly, the doctor’s vague prescription is little help. Is there a cure for
love? A gentle kiss at the end, so quiet that it might just be heard if the reader places an ear to the book,
marks the start of the continuation of this ethereal tale.
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clara dackenberg
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This and previous spread: From Nu eller kanske Mu – en kärlekshistoria (2010)
Helena Davidsson Neppelberg
Helena Davidsson Neppelberg (born 1963) trained in Graphic Design and Illustration at Konstfack (University College of Arts,
Crafts and Design) 1988–1992. She works as an illustrator for magazines and publishing houses, illustrating both her own and
other authors’ books, including those of her sister, Cecilia Davidsson. Helena Davidsson Neppelberg has been awarded working
grants from both the Swedish Authors’ Fund and the Swedish Arts Grants Committee, and in 2002 received
the Stora Svenska Illustratörspriset, a Swedish award for illustrators.
Website: www.davidsson-neppelberg.se
Photo: Fredrik Neppelberg
Mammas lilla Olle, 2008 (Mum’s Little Olle), with text by Cecilia
Davidsson, is a reworking of the song Mors lilla Olle by Alice
Tegnér. In Helena Davidsson Neppelberg’s version, the content
is embellished one level with dramatic images whose graphic
simplicity creates a sharp contrast. The colour palette is clear and
strong, based as it is around black and primary colours. Olle’s face,
however, shines like a white dot, both on the cover and in the
vivid red spruce forest and at home in bed as he sleeps the night
away. The face draws attention and keeps the focus trained on
Olle, who also meets a big brown bear in the forest, just like in the
song. But here it is not Olle’s lips that are blue from the berries.
It is the bear’s tongue, which is a marvellous blueberry blue.
Even scarier is the picturebook Kom in om du vågar!, 2010
(Come in if You Dare). It contains all the ingredients of a good
horror story: full moon, spider webs, frogs and a skeleton. It also
includes wonderfully humorous grossness like “Kiss the frog!”:
The frog lies relaxing on its back in a cup of water. Its broad grin and laid-back pose, with front legs like
arms resting over the edge of the cup, make it look more like a playboy than an enchanted prince. And
Kalle’s sickly green soup, who wants to taste it? Worms, red toadstools, nails and a bottle with a skull
and crossbones lie on the table next to the skeleton Kalle, who is wearing a chef’s hat at a jaunty angle.
The Swedish proverb “make soup on a nail” causes a little extra chuckle. The humour constantly disarms
the nerve-tingling sense of fear and makes it exciting to see what the next page will bring.
The story Prinsen och önskestenen, 2012 (The Prince and the Wishing Stone) is all about friendship. Like
all good tales, the story starts by setting the scene, a small town with tall houses and a church steeple.
And then there is a castle, a fairytale castle built of grey stone with towers and flapping banners. Next,
the prince is introduced in a green park with bushes and flowerbeds. The prince sits under a tree with
a small chest in his arms. In it lies a treasure, the Wishing Stone, which he got from his friend – and
reminds him of that friend.
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helena davidsson neppelberg
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From Kom in om du vågar (2010)
helena davidsson neppelberg
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From Mammas lilla Olle (2008)
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Eva Eriksson
Eva Eriksson (born 1949) graduated from Konstfack (University College of Arts, Crafts and Design) as an art teacher.
Since her debut in 1977, she has published a long list of her own books, but she has also illustrated several children’s books
by other authors, including Barbro Lindgren and Ulf Nilsson. Her awards include the Elsa Beskow Plaque,
the Heffaklump Award for Mamman och den vilda bebin (The Wild Baby) 1980 with text by Barbro Lindgren,
the Gold Plaque in Bratislava (1981), the Astrid Lindgren Prize (2001) and
the Ottilia Adelborg Award (2006).
Photo: Cato Lein
Eva Eriksson’s illustrations for Barbro Lindgren’s books about the boy
Max are exciting and action-packed. With small flourishes – of body
language, colour and angle – these apparently simple picturebooks are
consummate tales with a strong nerve. The young child’s rounded head,
plump nappy and knobbly knees are drawn with such care, as are the
surroundings that form the setting for the more or less monumental
dramas in a small child’s life. Max is indeed a fully fledged performer
with a full mastery of the actor’s art. The ever-present co-star is Max’s
dog, whose antics are often crucial drivers of the action. In addition, the
dog is at the heart of some of the more comical situations in the stories.
There is also a dog in the picturebook Andrejs längtan, 1997 (Andrei’s
Search, 2000), with text by Barbro Lindgren, but this time the dog is
just tagging along with the boy Vova and Andrei, who is off in search of
his mother in St. Petersburg. In this picturebook, the reader encounters
a child who gets to experience life going from happiness at home in his mother’s kitchen to loneliness in
the big dormitories of the children’s home. Dream, fantasy and reality blend in merging watercolours in
a pale, muted colour palette. The light pen and brushstrokes capture a by-gone age, when uncles wore
caps and grandmas wore headscarves, while at the same time they mark out the the seriousness and
small joys of life.
In Malla cyklar, 2003 (A Crash Course for Molly, 2005) the setting is also an urban environment from the
past. The little girl pig has half a pumpkin as a helmet, but she also has a plaster on her head, as well
as one on each elbow and knee. Learning to ride a bike is a wobbly business, as shown in a series of
pictures of Molly steering wrong, falling, starting again – and falling off again. Mixed with pictures that
bleed across the page, these situational images give a strong sense of movement. Molly and her grandma
cycle in and out of the pictures from different angles, at varying distances from the objects and the
people that they come across during their cycling trip. The trip also leads to a visit to the cake shop,
together with a driving instructor who they bump into in more senses than one.
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From Andrejs längtan (1997)
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From Malla cyklar (2003)
Ann Forslind
Ann Forslind was born in Gothenburg in 1953, and has been a freelance illustrator since the mid-1970s. Her picture book
debut came in 1986, since when she has published almost 50 titles, half of which with her own text. She received the
Elsa Beskow Plaque in 2001. Ann Forslind is also a member of the Swedish Academy for Children’s Books and
a lecturer in illustration at Konstfack (University College of Arts, Crafts and Design).
[Member of the jury, took part in the discussion on focus and theme, but not in the final vote]
Photo: Fanny Hernried Forslind
Bäbis drags a shopping bag along on the cover of Bäbis Hejdå, 2012
(Bye-bye Bäbis). In inventive drawings, Ann Forslind puts her finger
on a young child’s intense thirst for knowledge. Because how do you
find out what things can be used as if you don’t experiment? All sorts
of objects lie heaped up in a pile on the floor. Things that Bäbis puts
on or stuffs in the bag, before waving goodbye to the reader.
In the picturebooks about Bäbis, the focus is on feelings,
expressions and playful learning. Bäbis kan, 2012 (Bäbis Can) introduces the reader to Bäbis’s love of feeling, seeing, experiencing and
experimenting when making buns. As the buns bake, Bäbis curiously
inspects the oven. Bäbis stands next to daddy, who is cleaning up
after Bäbis’s baking efforts, which may not have proceeded entirely
in a conventional adult way. Clever little flourishes give the reader
an insight into what the everyday might look like when you discover
and explore it from new perspectives.
The girl Greta gets involved in things that are not exactly everyday in the picturebook Aj! Eller när jag hamnade på sjukhuset, 1994
(Ouch! Or When I Ended up in Hospital). This is an objective story
with just the right splashes of humour in depicting the hospital environment. There is a doctor with
spectacles on the tip of her nose and a stethoscope around her neck, the suspiciously cheery nurse who
doesn’t manage to take any samples, the velvet nurse with hair done up in a bun who can also knit – and
then there is Jimmie who has time to take care of Greta. Greta describes the actual operation as Greenland. This is the perfect description as the staff, dressed all in green for surgery, bend over imposingly
in the picture. The feeling that the world has no fixed contours when you succumb to the anaesthetic is
reflected in the wall clock, whose round shape sways about. There is a wonderfully nostalgic reference
in the old scraps of books on the theme of healthcare, which are reproduced on the inside cover of the book.
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From Bäbis rädd (2009)
Ann forslind
From Aj! Eller när jag hamnade på sjukhuset (1994)
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Gunna Grähs
Gunna Grähs (born 1954) studied at Konstfack (University College of Arts, Crafts and Design) in Stockholm.
She is an illustrator, designer and picturebook author, with works including her own Hejhej (Hello There) series.
Since her debut in 1982 with Jullan vill vara med (Jullan Wants To Come Too), text by Kjell Johansson,
Gunna Grähs has published over 50 titles, mostly picturebooks with text by her or other authors, but also comics and
non-fiction. She has received awards such as the Adamson Statuette, the Elsa Beskow Plaque,
the Heffaklumpen Award and the Kulla-Gulla Prize.
[Member of the jury, took part in the discussion on focus and theme, but not in the final vote]
Photo: Ulla Montan
Gunna Grähs draws characters with strong personalities. Sometimes,
they borrow from the figures of the old cartoons, but always with a
loveable feel. The pictures for Nusse-kudden, 1984 (Charlie’s Pillow, 1985),
with text by Håkan Jaensson and Arne Norlin, give a playful and
tender description of Charlie as he carries around his beloved pillow.
He can’t live without it. Gunna Grähs captures Charlie’s life with and
without his pillow in whimsical pictures. When the pillow gets left at
nursery, it sets off an incredible train of events. Dad breaks into the
nursery and four uniformed policemen are despatched, blue lights
flashing. The comedy of the situation does not go unnoticed. The bold
contour lines form, concentrate and create volume, while the shading
gives the images depth and reflects the concealed light sources.
The Hejhej-series (Hello There) focuses on encounters between
people. The books have beautifully rich colour pictures with sharp
shadowing. The picturebook Syrma och Tocke Broms, 2007 (Syrma
and Tocke Broms) is a charming tale set in Syrma’s newsagents, where the two protagonists have a few
minutes of interaction. The scene is skilfully set. The shop is presented with a 360 degree tour in an almost
cinematic sequence, drawing the reader in and giving a clear sense of place.
Wonderful little details give each story local colour. In Tutu och Tant Kotla, 2006 (Tutu and Aunt
Kotla), the two characters are brought together in Kotla’s cosy living room, where they exchange stories
about their childhood. Tutu, a young man, visualises grandpa’s cottage in a sandy landscape, against a
clear blue sky. The blazing sun casts sharp shadows around the children, who are playing football outside the cottage. Aunt Kotla, an older lady, visualises timber houses and brick buildings in a drab brown
spring landscape where the children sail a bark boat. The pictures are also sprinkled with comical and
gently ironic flourishes, such as the cat pawing at the birdcage, knocking the bird off its perch, or the
three overflowing bins with recycling instructions on them.
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From Nusse-kudden (1984)
gunna grähs
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From the Hejhej-series: Dino och lilla Kurren (2006)
gunna grähs
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From the Hejhej-series: Tutu och Tant Kotla (2006)
Joanna Hellgren
Joanna Hellgren (born 1981) is an illustrator and cartoonist who studied at Konstfack (University College of Arts,
Crafts and Design) in Stockholm. Her first comic book, Mon frère nocturne (My Nocturnal Brother), was published by the French
publishing house Editions Cambourakis in 2008 and was chosen as one of the best French books of the year by the jury at
the comic book festival in Angoulême. Frances Episode 1 was published in France in 2008 and in Sweden in 2009 (by Galago).
She received the Urhunden Prize for Best Original Swedish Comic Book in 2010,
and in 2012 the Heffaklumpen Award for the trilogy about Frances.
Website: www.joannahellgren.com
Photo: Anna Lundell
Joanna Hellgren gives a psychological insight into what it’s like to
be someone’s soulmate – to think the same thoughts at the same
time – as with the narrator and cousin Biliam in the picturebook
Mormors sjal, 2012 (Grandma’s Shawl), written by Åsa Lind. They
share an internalised world with each other and with the reader –
a world that literally blooms under grandma’s black shawl with its
fringing and red roses. Like a magician’s cloak, there is a world within
a world behind the shawl, a calming refuge from everything that
might prevent clear thinking about important matters. A refuge that
grandma guards over as she sits in the armchair, half-dozing.
On the other side of the shawl, a whole landscape unfolds. It
stretches from snow-clad mountain peaks to a tower block – separated by a forest – like an exquisite piece of crochet work. Here,
there is all the time in the world. With chalks, watercolours and
collage, Joanna Hellgren creates dense, strong and emotional images
with a bold presence. On the next page, the tree trunks in the forest
are brown and greeny blue in fluid watercolours, with the pigments bleeding into each other, forming
ethereal patterns like frozen ice crystals. One of the cousins lays out a white path on the black shawl
floor of the den. This path leads naturally on to the final page where, nine days later, the cousins are
laying white stones that they have collected around grandma’s grave.
Just beforehand, they lock themselves in the bathroom for a bit of breathing space. Depicted
from above, they half-lie in the bathtub with their feet touching, so that their thoughts can literally flow
between them as if they were one. The reader floats above, looking down from the ceiling. The perspective then changes on the next page. Now the reader is behind the cousins, sharing their experience as
practically the whole family looks in with angry and curious expressions. These sharp shifts are a clear
comment on how important it is to be able to create your own worlds. Or as grandma puts it: “When
you think, you get pictures and words. When you get pictures and words, you get questions. When you
ask questions, you get even more questions.”
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Hellgren
This and previous
Mormors sjal (2012)
Fromspread:
MormorsFrom
sjal (2012)
Anna Höglund
Anna Höglund (born 1958) is an author, illustrator and artist. She has written several books, as well as worked with other authors such as
Ulf Stark, Barbro Lindgren, Eva Susso, Gunnar Lundkvist and Ulf Nilsson. Anna Höglund also writes drama and makes animated films.
Her books have been translated into several languages. Her awards include the BIB Plaque in Bratislava (1983),
the Elsa Beskow Plaque (1988), the Pier Paolo Vergerio Prize (1993 and 1998), the Dutch De Zilveren Penseel Award (1994),
Deutsche Jugendliteratur Preis (1995 and 1996) and the August Prize (1996).
Photo: Viktor Gårdsäter
Först var det mörkt, 1991 (First There Was Darkness) is an alternative
creation story that Anna Höglund wrote along with Otto, aged 3.
Across brown land, a grey-orange dawn sky arches over the opening
phrase: “First there was darkness”. Then comes the earth, the moon,
the sun, the morning and the man, who sails away when the rain
comes. The voyage ends on an island, where the man meets the angel
Eriksson. Together they sit against a smiling tree trunk, each licking
an ice cream. It is a direct and simple tale that stylishly combines the
story of the world’s creation and the existence of angels with the
enjoyably prosaic act of eating ice cream.
Syborg Stenstump, on the other hand, makes a fantastic voyage
through an atlas, whose content is depicted in inventive images in
the picturebook Resor jag aldrig gjort av Syborg Stenstump, 1992
(Journeys I have Never Made, by Syborg Stenstump). When the
final demand for payment drops through the letterbox, Syborg is
lying on a spindle-backed seat looking at an atlas with a pith helmet on her head. Next to her on the
floor is an open box of Cuban cigars, and alongside that is a book titled “Islands Like a String of Pearls”.
Syborg imagines a burning fire in Tierra del Fuego as she lights a cigar and stands unhappily in a polka
dot bikini and red heels on the Bikini Islands, which she doesn’t like. The story continues around the
world in the same humorous way, with Syborg encountering every possible and impossible cliché of the
travel genre through Anna Höglund’s illustrations.
Travel is also the starting point for the sensitive picturebook about Mina och Kåge, 1995 (Mina and
Kåge), where Kåge, who lacks empathy, suddenly announces that he is off to Vietnam. Self-righteously
and pipe in hand, he looks up at his speech bubble as he informs Mina. This is an apt portrayal of what
it’s like to be left alone. Over four chapters, the reader gets to share Mina’s emotional turmoil on white
pages with black line drawings, accentuated with apricot/orange. But Mina get through the experience and out the other side. When, in the last picture, she tells Kåge that: “I’m also going off travelling”
Kåge’s body language and facial expression, as he drops his pipe, reflect his genuine dismay. And Mina
sees her point really hit home.
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From Först var det mörkt (1991)
Plats för snart inscannad bild
anna höglund
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From Resor jag aldrig gjort av Syborg Stenstump (1992)
från Resor jag aldrig gjort....
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Maria Jönsson
Maria Jönsson (born 1958) has been a freelance newspaper and book illustrator since the early 1990s.
Her picture book debut came with Prata persilja, 1999 (Talk Parsley), later followed by her
own picturebook series about Spyflugan Astrid, 2007 (Astrid the Bluebottle).
Maria Jönsson received the Ottilia Adelborg Award in 2010 and was given First Prize by the Children’s
Book Jury in 2008 for Spyflugan Astrid flyger högt (Astrid the Bluebottle Flies High).
Website: www.spyflugan.com
Photo: Jenny Mark Ketter
Spyflugan Astrid, 2007 (Astrid the Bluebottle) is an inquisitive girl who
enjoys adventures in the human world. She lives behind the sofa with
all her relatives. Astrid, who likes trying out all the fun things on the
other side, makes secret forays now and then. One night she gets out
of her bunk, one of many where the bluebottles are all asleep. She
climbs down a ladder and flies off, meandering over the page and out
over the edge. With deft economy, Maria Jönsson creates a loving
description of a usually rather irritating insect. She beautifully captures
the erratic progress of flies in the dotted and full lines that cross here
and there over the pages as Astrid buzzes around. With red as the
focal colour, black shading and grey tints, this is a highly graphic tale.
On one page, in the grey of night, Astrid sits driving a toy train.
She cheekily dangles one arm out of the window. In one wagon,
a skeleton lies as if asleep. A striped sausage snoozes in another. On
the same page, Astrid also fences with a pirate wearing a pirate’s hat.
One hand is a hook and in the other the pirate holds a cutlass with a blood-red blade. Alongside Astrid
and the pirate stands a road sign with a spider on it. But Astrid also finds time to hang and dangle from a
green dinosaur’s arm, next to a pearl bracelet.
At seven o’clock, a noticeably groggy Astrid flies out of the fridge. It can be dangerous to eat as
much salami as she has just done. So much that she fall asleep on the plate and end up in the fridge.
After that experience, Astrid announces that she will mostly eat vegetables, as she sits on a cucumber
and leans against a pepper. There is a lovely interplay between the two worlds, the fly world and the
human world. In the human kitchen a baby’s bottle stands on the worktop next to the fridge. In the fly
kitchen there are 22 baby’s bottles stacked on shelves, the table and the floor. And of course there is a
stove behind the sofa, but Astrid calls the hob in the human world the black sun.
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This and previous spread: From Spyflugan Astrid (2007)
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Olof Landström
Born in 1943 in Turku, Finland, Olof Landström is an author and illustrator who studied at Konstfack
(University College of Arts, Crafts and Design) in Stockholm. He has worked primarily in book illustration and animation.
With collaborators such as Peter Cohen and Lena Landström, he created the film series Kalles klätterträd, 1975 (Charlie’s Climbing Tree)
(First Prize Prix Jeunesse in Munich 1976), Magister Flykt, 1984 (Teacher Haze) (Second Prize in Los Angeles and Bratislava 1985) and
the short film Herr Bohm och sillen, 1987 (Mr Bohm and the Herring) (First Prize Prix Jeunesse, animation category 1988). In 1990 Lena
and Olof Landström made their first picturebook together, Nisses nya mössa (Will’s New Cap). Since then, the couple have produced
sixteen new titles, including a series about the sheep Bu och Bä (Boo and Baa).
Olof Landström has received a number of awards, among them a New York Times Award for Olssons pastejer (Olson’s Meat Pies) as
one of the year’s ten best illustrated books (1989), a grant from the Swedish Society for the Promotion of Literature (1991),
the Elsa Beskow Plaque (1992) and, together with Lena Landström, a mention as one of the top five children’s books in
the Washington Post for the picturebook Fyra hönor och en tupp, 2005 (Four Hens and a Rooster),
the Heffaklumpen Award (2006) and the Astrid Lindgren Prize (2009).
Photo: Ulla Montan
Olof Landström captures everyday life’s hardships in a humble way that really
hits the mark in his subtle illustrations. His book about Pom and Pim, 2012 is
delightfully engaging, despite Pom falling on the face. But Pom finds a bank
note – what luck! Pom buys a big ice cream, but gets a stomach ache – what
bad luck – and needs to lie down. But up there on the ceiling is the lost
balloon – what luck! Pom and Pim go outside. The balloon bobbles nicely…
BANG – what bad luck. But every cloud has a silver lining in this tale. As the
rain literally falls like blue rods on the hill, Pom and the companion rag doll
Pim, are back having fun. Luck and misfortune play with each other through
the whole story. A burst, pink balloon offers excellent protection against the
downpour – for Pim who is wrapped in it. We are similarly introduced to Boo and Baa, as they battle
their way through a snowstorm in Bu och Bä i blåsväder, 1995 (Boo and Baa in Windy Weather, 1996). In
the carefully illustrated pages, they head downhill in good weather to do some shopping. The route
home does of course mean going up the same hill, but this time in a headwind and heavy snow. When
the cabbage, one of the items they bought at the shop, rolls down the hill, the comedy of the situation
comes to the fore. First the cabbage rolls away in an ever-growing snowball, then comes Baa and finally
Boo, yelling: “Catch it!”. The stories are united by their focus on wind and weather, luck and misfortune
and language and style. However, the characters are inherently different. Pom is alone, although accompanied by Pim, while Boo and Baa are two kindred spirits. And although they are two “muttonheads”,
they are undoubtedly smart. In their clothing – shorts and a dress, scarves, knitted caps and matching
yellow gloves – they represent a bygone yet modern age, and the action itself is timeless. The same is true
of Pom’s long cardigan. The stories, on the other hand, are less fixed in time: nothing is certain, anything
can happen. Olof Landström’s simple, but expressive figures and Lena Landström’s pithy text make the
books both exciting and humorous at the same time. No wonder readers find themselves secretly smiling at all the craziness, which just happens, virtually without warning.
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From Bu och Bä i blåsväder (1995)
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From Pom och Pim (2012)
Pija Lindenbaum
Pija Lindenbaum studied at Konstfack (University College of Arts, Crafts and Design) in Stockholm. She debuted with the picturebook
Else-Marie och de sju småpapporna (1990), which was instantly translated into a number of different languages.
It was published in the USA under the title Else-Marie and Her Seven Little Daddies in 1991. Pija Lindenbaum has received
several prizes and awards for her books, including a New York Times Award for best picturebook, the Elsa Beskow Plaque (1993),
Illustrator of the Year at Bologna Children’s Book Fair (1993), the August Prize for Gittan och gråvargarna, 2000 (Bridget and
the Grey Wolves), the Astrid Lindgren Prize and the Ottilia Adelborg Award (2008), the Royal Pro Patria Society’s
Gold medal, inclusion on the IBBY Honour List for Siv sover vilse (Siv Sleeps Away)
and Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis (2012).
Photo: Ulrica Zwenger
Gittan och gråvargarna, 2000 (Bridget and the Grey Wolves, 2008) is about a
little girl who gets lost in the forest on a trip with the preschool, which
results in her having to spend the night with a pack of dishevelled, whingy
and whiny wolves, the comic characters of the story in both pictures and
text. Bridget, who is initially described as being scared of everything,
turns out to be a real pack leader, immediately taking command. Set
against fiery red ground and sky, an unkempt spruce forest, as unkempt
as the wolves, is the setting for this sensitive chamber piece, which ends
with Bridget standing right on top of the playhouse roof, afraid of nothing.
Facing her inner fears, represented by a bunch of timid grey wolves, ends
in triumph for Bridget.
Kenta is also able to triumph at the end of the story Kenta och barbisarna,
2007 (Kenta and the Barbies). However, the victory that he secures is not as
personal as Bridget’s. In fact it is as much a victory for all children atthe
preschool who stray beyond their assigned gender. Kenta’s dad represents
a humorous cliché of a made-up gender norm. With his blond crewcut,
broad chin, bulging biceps, camouflage trousers and football, he personifies the polar opposite of Kenta’s
blonde, long-legged Barbie with her wasp-like waist. To transcend invisible, but often very clearly
demarcated, boundaries, you sometimes need raw models and templates. How else could the different
interests of the girls and boys be united in the princess-skirted football match that concludes the book?
In the picturebook Siv sover vilse, 2009 (Siv Sleeps Away) Pija Lindenbaum has created a richly colourful
thriller. Siv stands alone in a long, high corridor lined with closed doors. With her pink, wheeled suitcase,
she is at the tip of a shaft of light, looking at the reader. Her position on the cover gives a direct insight
into the theme of the story, backed up by the title. With bold shifts in perspective, suggestive depictions
of space, shadows and strong light sources, Pija Lindenbaum builds up a powerful backdrop to Siv’s
experience of the exciting, new and slightly frightening event that is a first sleepover.
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Previous page: From Gittan och gråvargarna (2000)
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Above: From Kenta och barbisarna (2007)
Right: From Siv sover vilse (2009)
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Eva Lindström
Eva Lindström (born 1952) studied at Västerås School of Art and Konstfack (University College of Arts, Crafts and Design) in Stockholm.
She illustrates her own and other authors’ texts, and has made three short animated films. Her previous titles include Min vän Lage
(My Friend Lage), Någon flyttar in (Someone Moves In), Limpan är sugen (Limpan is Hungry) and Vid bergets långa breda fot
(At the Long, Broad Foot of the Mountain). She received the Elsa Beskow Plaque in 1995 and the Snowball Award for
Best Swedish Picturebook in 2012. She has been nominated for the August Prize seven times,
most recently for her book Jag tycker inte om vatten, 2010 (I Don’t Like Water).
Photo: Alfabeta
Eva Lindström’s stories are at once tender tales of the everyday and
humorous pictorial stories. Two characters who end up reunited are
Apan och jag, 2011 (The Monkey and Me). The monkey gets separated
from “Me” when the two are out shopping for food. Me then goes and
waits for the monkey to come back, while thinking about all the fun
things that the monkey is doing, and the pictures fill in more detail
about the monkey’s imagined adventure. The monkey takes a taxi to the
station and then takes the train to the Swedish town Arvika. There the
monkey visits a rat who serves up blue cheese. But actually, the monkey
isn’t missing. Here and there, a tail, a hand or the monkey’s head appear
at home with Me, who is waiting and missing a friend, chopping onions
and crying, making dinner for two with candles on the table.
Eva Lindström’s illustrations always employ a tasteful colour palette.
Bright orange combines with pink and azure, or beige and pale blue, to
give the pictures a certain softness. In the picturebooks Jag tycker inte om vatten, 2010 (I Don’t Like Water)
and I skogen, 2008 (In the Forest), Alf, and the characters Maggan, Snuten and Trim, inhabit beautiful
watercolour settings which have a very appealing mistiness to them. Of these inventive stories, the first
is about Alf, who plays around with canoe number 13 and ends up in the water, or turns his back on
his friends when the tadpoles are released because he doesn’t like water. The second is about when the
trio gently follow the seasons in the forest, who leaves in the autumn and return in the spring – just like
migratory birds.
The picturebook Limpan är sugen, 1997 (Limpan is Hungry) is about a woman and a dog, who
both likes to eat sausages. Apricot and purple oval-shaped scenes show woman and dog together or in
majestic solitude. The story proceeds like a spiral. The dog spots the sausage that the woman is eating.
The woman heads home and goes to bed and the dog follows. When the woman, who can’t sleep, goes
out to find the dog, the dog slips into the house. Back inside, they meet up and the reunion is celebrated
with sausage, of course.
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From Jag tycker inte om vatten (2010)
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From Apan och jag (2011)
Sara Lundberg
Sara Lundberg (born 1971) is an illustrator who studied at McDaniel College in Maryland, USA. Over many years, she has illustrated other authors’
texts, including the book Skriv om och om igen (Write, Rewrite and Rewrite Again) by Ylva Karlsson, Katarina Kuick and Lilian Bäckman,
for which she received the August Prize 2009. Sara Lundberg’s first solo picturebook was Vita streck, 2009 (White Lines).
She has received several awards, including the Elsa Beskow Plaque in 2012 for Vita Streck och Öjvind (White Lines and Öjvind),
which was also nominated for the August Prize in 2011, and received the Gold Award in the Association of Swedish Illustrators and
Graphic Designers’ competition Kolla! for Cords, 2010 (Hear Us and Have Mercy). She was also awarded a
working grant from the Swedish Authors’ Fund 2011.
Website: www.saralundberg.se
Photo: Snezana Vucetic Bohm
When straight line meets crooked line, it eventually leads to liking.
However, initially the perspectives are very different. In Sara Lundberg’s
picturebook Vita streck och Öyvind, 2009 (White Lines and Öyvind)
the orderly girl Vita (White) meets the boy Öyvind. All she does is
make straight lines, while he ends up making crooked tracks when
he climbs out of Vita’s paint. Öyvind walks into the story like a
whirlwind – and creates an emotional storm in Vita. This is depicted
in restrained and contrast-rich pictures, where straight and flowing
lines run across the colourful pages. It is, in many ways, a very poetic
continuation of the narrative that Vita started in the picturebook
Vita streck, 2009 (White Lines).
The picturebook Emblas universum, 2011 (Embla’s Universe), with
text by Majken Pollack, contains another strong characterisation of
a girl. In Embla, Sara Lundberg portrays a child who is everything.
Embla’s dark eyes, with long, thick eyelashes, look back at the reader
from the moon, the tree and the book that describes everything a person needs to know. There is simply
no room for little sister Anna. Embla’s strict and philosophical logic is wonderfully headstrong. The
variation between framed images in watercolour-filled pencil and full watercolours with elements of
collage bleeding over the page clearly and powerfully reflects the two worlds that Embla inhabits.
Liv, in her sleeveless red dress with white dots, is another girl who exists in a different world. In
En blommas liv, 2008 (A Flower’s Life), written by Stefan Casta, the title itself gives away the fact that Liv,
who has been given this symbolic name – Life – is seen in terms of the annual cycle of the flower water
avens. This is a beautiful book on flora, fauna, insects and birds, while also being a lovely account of
the yearly cycle. Together, the frog, the buttercups, the wren, the bumble-bees, the seed pods, the
dragonflies, the mushroom basket, the rowanberries, the field mouse, the fox, the brimstone butterfly
and the coltsfoot create a warm and stylish portrait of nature in Sara Lundberg’s gentle images, with
their brushstrokes tracking across the paper.
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FromFrom
Vita streck
och jag
Öyvind
(2009)
Apan och
(2011)
sara lundberg
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From Emblas universum (2011)
sara lundberg
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From En blommas liv (2008)
Jan Lööf
Jan Lööf (born 1940) is an author, jazz musician and artist who trained at Konstfack (University College of Arts, Crafts and Design) in Stockholm.
Two of his greatest inspirations are Wilson McCoy, who illustrated The Phantom in 1947–1961, and Al Smith, who created the comic series
Mutt and Jeff in 1932. Jan Lööf debuted in 1966 with two books for different publishers, En trollkarl i Stockholm (A Magician in Stockholm) and
Morfar är sjörövare (My Grandpa is a Pirate). One of his many picturebooks in recent years is Örnis bilar, 1994 (Örni’s Vehicles), which has been
translated into several languages. Jan Lööf also illustrated the cartoon strips Felix, 1967–1973 and Ville, 1975.
He has received various awards for his work, including the Heffaklumpen Award, as well as a grant from the Swedish Society
for the Promotion of Literature (1974) and the magazine Vi’s grant for illustrators (1975).
Photo: Stefan Tell
With an unerring eye for the absurd, Jan Lööf serves up unlikely stories with a splash of humour. There is no standing on
ceremony as the tales play with narrative concepts and tropes.
There are copious references to other images and works, as
if they are an important part of the content. Sagan om det röda
äpplet, 1974 (Who’s Got the Apple?, 1975) contains a picture within a picture of Quasimodo from The Hunchback of Notre-Dame,
written by Victor Hugo in 1831. Together with references to
other equally apt classics – such as Tintin’s dog Snowy by Hergé
– these insertions become a jokey commentary that benefits
the stories as a whole and the reader.
Another common theme is looking to the past. The
illustrated versions of Morfar är sjörövare, 1966 (My Grandpa
is a Pirate, 1974) show the common associations of the 1970s
with the middle classes of the 19th century. In the first edition
grandpa, dressed in a shirt and tie, sits in a rounded armchair
under a chandelier, while in the later edition he wears a check
jacket and sits in a wing-backed chair next to a standard lamp.
And in Matildas katter, 2008 (Matilda’s Cats) the settings,
which are so typically Jan Lööf, embrace the whole of the 20th century, giving a very timely retro feel.
Who’s Got the Apple? was considered innovative when it was published in the 1970s. And it still is
because, even though it is rare for today’s classrooms to have a harmonium in the corner, baddies to wear
sunglasses and false beards and old men to wear pinstriped suits and hats, the pictorial story is quite ingenious in its construction. It is like watching a film and looking at the set designer’s three-dimensional
model at the same time, while several incidents take place in different locations and on different levels in
the story. Drawing clear parallels with cartoons, Jan Lööf’s picturebooks tend to revel in ambiguity.
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From Sagan om det röda äpplet (1974)
jan lööf
100är sjörövare (1966)
Above: From Morfar
Right: From Matildas katter (2011)
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Sven Nordqvist
Sven Nordqvist (born 1946) is an author, draughtsman and illustrator. In 1981 he won a picturebook competition with Agaton Öman och alfabetet
(Agaton Öman and the Alphabet). Then came the old man Pettson and his cat Findus, who are now the subject of ten books. Many of them have been
translated into around 40 languages. Sven Nordqvist also illustrates picturebooks by other authors, such as the books about
Mamma Mu och Kråkan (Mamma Moo and the Crow), with text by Jujja and Tomas Wieslander.
Sven Nordqvist has received awards such as the Elsa Beskow Plaque (1989) and Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis (1992),
the Astrid Lindgren Prize (2003), the August Prize (2007) for Var är min syster? (Where is My Sister?)
and the Schullström Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Fiction (2008).
Photo: Opal
Abundance is the defining feature of Sven Nordqvist’s picturebook
Var är min syster?, 2007 (Where is My Sister?, 2011). The reader can easily
become immersed for hours in this exploration of time and space. At the
back of the book, Sven Nordqvist writes that this is a “journey through
dreamlike landscapes, made as a single, long, continuous picture.” And
each page certainly does spill over into the next through small, almost
imperceptible, shifts. All the way through the book, the reader encounters historical settings and references to subjects such as art, architecture,
literature and science. Fantastical impossibilities also occur during the
flight that the rat sister’s little brother takes in a pear-balloon with a wise
and educated older rat.
Concepts such as reality and fantasy are freely blended in this story,
which takes in a chandelier made of fishing lures, a figure in a brown
cowl who shows his bottom, an armoured rhino, a lava-spewing volcano,
a samovar and a set square – to name but a few of the objects and characters. Each spread embodies a
perhaps rather contradictory sense of humorous seriousness. The texts, which were written after the
pictures, form a poetic story about the art of understanding how another person thinks. The quest is to
find the sister, who appears on each spread, but just out of sight of her little brother.
This picturebook can be compared to a cabinet of curiosities, filled with marvels. A figurative
counterpart is playfully drawn in the form of an open temple courtyard, surrounded by arches bearing
some of history’s greatest finders. The courtyard contains a range of objects placed on white plinths,
such as a bent nail, a seashell, a broken eggshell, a skull and a squeezed tube, all of which are observed
by figures either alone or in groups. Outside, in the landscaped garden, stands a glass jar of insects, also
watched by a clutch of figures. Sorting, organising and defining are part and parcel of a museum’s mania
for collecting, which is just as weird an idea as eight bulls in an enamel chamber pot or brass trumpet
lilies. As the wise old rat points out in the text, the truth can be a tricky thing.
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From Var är min syster? (2007)
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From Var är min syster? (2007)
Jockum Nordström
Jockum Nordström (born 1963) is an artist. In the late 1990s he regularly illustrated for the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter,
but he has also created books, short animated films, album covers and public art. Jockum Nordström has attained international
recognition as a contemporary artist with exhibitions both in Sweden and abroad. He is represented at many museums,
such as MoMA in New York, Centre Pompidou in Paris and Moderna Museet in Stockholm. In 1999 he received the
Elsa Beskow Plaque for the book Var är Sailor och Pekka? (Where are Sailor and Pekka?).
Photo: Ulla Montan
The picturebook medium and the comic strip medium enter into a
glorious alliance in Jockum Nordström’s books about Sailor and his
dog Pekka. The books blend full-spread images with boxed panels to
give the stories a billowing, catchy, gently syncopated rhythm. This
visual rhythm is accentuated by the technique of switching between
a collage of cut-out figures and photographic images, and between
drawing and painting. The mix of styles and forms of expression makes
the illustrations unique. Here in Sailor and Pekka’s world, there is
always room for both beauty and ugliness.
In Varför – Därför, Sailor och Pekka, 2003 (Why – Because, Sailor
and Pekka) the reader is presented with a handful of references to 20th
century art. Designers and artists are name-checked, while abstract
paintings, modern sculpture and contemporary architecture also
feature. Other images are also inserted, like postcards from different
cities around the world. As well as the locations, they call to mind a bygone age when information was
analogue. Similarly, the book presents links to a time gone by in the urban spaces and other settings
that Sailor and Pekka inhabit. So too do Werner Aspenström’s two poems Europa (Europe) from
Hundarna, 1954 (The Dogs) and Jag väntar ännu på min ankomst (I still await my arrival) from Snölegend,
1949 (Snow Legend). These open and close the work, bookending the more prosaic tale about Sailor
and Pekka doing some wallpapering for Mrs Jackson after they win the lottery.
Like wallpaper, life comes in strips, sections that join together to form a picture – just as coherent as
it is disjointed. As such, there are many unforeseen and unforeseeable events in the stories about Sailor
and Pekka. For example, playing with the linguistic construct – asking why, answering because – offers
both a witty and a serious explanation of what is happening. In this way, reality and imagination can
become united to create a third entity where colour, shape, surface, depth, opposites and similarities
appear by turns on one and the same page.
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From Varför – Därför, Sailor och Pekka (2003)
jockum nordström
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This and previous spread: From Varför – Därför, Sailor och Pekka (2003)
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Klara Persson
Klara Persson (born 1985) is an author and illustrator. She graduated from Högskolan för design och
konsthantverk (School of Design and Crafts) in Gothenburg with a Master’s degree in Design,
and has also studied creative writing.
She debuted in 2012 with the picturebook Molly & Sus for which she recieved the
Swedish Slangbellan Award in 2013.
Website: www.klarast.com
The plaits of Molly & Sus, 2012 run like an infinity symbol in Klara
Persson’s lovely story about the two girls who were born on the
same day. In fact, they are more like the two poles of a circle. The
pictures and text subtly show what it might be like to be seen as
so seemingly similar that you are treated as a single unit. However,
Molly is right-handed and Sus is left-handed, they dress differently
and each thinks that the other gets in the way – and that the one
must stick with the other. When you are physically joined by your
plaits, life becomes a little more complicated, like getting dressed if
the clothes have no zip or buttons, cycling – even if you do have a
tandem – or brushing your teeth when the toothbrushes clash.
On a piece of furniture next to the wash basin lies a pair of
scissors. Suddenly Sus cuts off the plaits, severing the ties. The focus
is on the onomatopoeic word “swish”, the scissors and the two
clipped plaits, which are now four seriously cropped tassels on the
outer edges of the page. Molly chooses to do her own thing, away
from Sus, in a pale yellow and grey living room. And that is where the drama arises. Because now that
they are no longer together, the roles are reversed. Sus needs Molly. In the darker grey, desolate setting
of the garden, where two tree trunks cast long shadows, Sus searches for Molly. In one grey and mintgreen spread, she writes a letter on lined paper and places it in an envelope. But nothing happens. She
goes to the playground and sits on the brown seesaw. And suddenly she is lifted up into the air – as
Molly sits on the other end.
The variation between bleeds, cut-outs, framed text plates and whole spreads creates an even flow,
along with the cool, light colour palette, which leads the reader to reflect on the disadvantages of being
together and the benefits of not being alone, both during the course of the story and long after it is over.
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This and previous spread: From Molly & Sus (2012)
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Charlotte Ramel
Charlotte Ramel (born 1959) studied advertising at Beckmans College of Design in Stockholm, where she also taught for a while.
In addition, she has worked as a designer for newspapers and advertising agencies. She debuted with Tårtboken (The Cake Book)
in 1988, for which she received the Excellent Swedish Design Award in 1989. Since then she has created several books and
collaborated with numerous authors. The most recent collaborator was Ulf Stark,
with whom she created the books about Kanel och Kanin (Cinnamon and Rabbit).
She received the Elsa Beskow Plaque in 2007.
Photo: Rabén & Sjögren
In the picturebook Kanel och Kanin och alla känslorna, 2012 (Cinnamon
and Rabbit and All the Feelings), with text by Ulf Stark, Charlotte Ramel
explores the entire emotional register of Kanel and Kanin. The two main
characters are given very different attributes, as expressed in their external features. Kanel has a charming bun-like swirl of hair on his head
and Kanin has touches of pink on her ears and nose. Charlotte Ramel
captures their feelings in facial expressions and in body language. The
whole emotional drama runs along a pale red brushstroke in watercolour
and is accentuated with a pale red background when they fall out.
The story starts with Kanel feeling sorry for, and comforting, Kanin,
who has tripped over a black rock and fallen flat on the ground. From
enjoying fun and games, Kanin is now crying her eyes out. And her sore
toe has gone very pink, with little black lines above it. Kanel drops to
his knees and says: “Even though you hurt yourself, I feel the pain too!”.
The lines that mark Kanel’s eyebrows are also curved to give a pained expression. When Kanin leaves
Kanel a little later on, because he has invited a third party – the squirrel – to join them, Kanin holds her
paws to her side as she looks angrily in towards the page. The direction of looks and movements,
coupled with the positioning of Kanel and Kanin on the spreads (Kanel on the left and Kanin on the
right), constantly drives the story forward.
The little worm in the red check cap plays a silent supporting role as he crawls through the story. He
hits upon, or rather is hit by, an equally silent worm in a red beret who drops from the sky. It is the bird
flying through the story who drops the female worm from its beak, just at the moment that Kanel and
Kanin back into each other. As they turn towards each other in joy, the girl worm enjoys a soft landing
on the back of the boy worm, knocking the wind out of him. Kanel, who has been suffering from a
“Kanin hug deficiency”, finally gets to unpack the picnic basket, whose red check tablecloth also has to
double up as a blanket. The story ends under a crooked fir tree, with the boy Kanel and the girl Kanin
lying on their backs, side by side, with the tablecloth pulled over them.
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From Kanel och Kanin och alla känslorna (2012)
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From Kanel och Kanin och alla känslorna (2012)
Matilda Ruta
Matilda Ruta (born 1982) is a designer and illustrator, with a Master’s degree from Konstfack (University College of Arts,
Crafts and Design) in Stockholm. Matilda Ruta creates graphic novels, picturebooks and works on varied illustration commissions
and decorative assignments. Her debut book, the graphic novel Tummelisa eller den andra vildmarken (Thumbelina or
the Other Wilderness), was published in 2011. Since May 2010, Matilda Ruta has been responsible for the design
of the magazine Brand. She also works with the junior website for Sveriges Radio
(Swedish Radio), contributing illustrations and designs.
Website: www.matildaruta.se.
Photo: Rasmus Malm
Matilda Ruta’s illustrations for Mirja och pojken i det rosa huset,
2012 (Mirja and the Boy in the Pink House), with text by
Sofia Nordin, are a cascade of clear, pure colours. In a glowing
green landscape, beneath a brilliant blue sky, a tale is told that
culminates in Mirja meeting William. This landscape mixes
stylised trees in the spirit of synthetism, and twining vegetation
with curving Art Nouveau lines. The idyllic and romantic
image of a Swedish summer in the countryside remains
throughout, although Mirja does make an initial attempt to
dismiss the rural idyll as the most boring place in the world.
Summer really can be as stylistically pure and beautiful as this,
here hand in hand with Swedish contemporary realism.
Mirja’s parents carry everything to the country in their
rucksacks like two experienced backpackers. They are also
lugging about bags, a rubber ring and a beach ball. At the
old couple’s house they are served bought buns in a bag. Mirja wears a t-shirt and shorts, or trousers
and a sweater, and has a traditional summer sticking plaster on her knee. Other modern clothes, such
as sneakers, top and cap, accurately depict today’s summer gear. On the last page Mirja and William sit
next to each other on a moss-encrusted rock. Behind them is the tall, dark spruce forest. “The sunlight is
warm on your skin” – and that’s exactly what summer feels like.
The pages are beautifully linked by painted, cut-out and drawn elements overlapping over and
under each other. Expressive and simultaneously symbolic, the realistic is elegantly combined with the
decorative, producing a suite of luminous pictures in purple, red, pink, yellow, blue, green, brown,
orange and grey. The colours wash over the reader like a cleansing tidal wave, almost as if the illustrations
were cut from several layers of colour, like a Japanese woodcut.
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This and previous spread: From Mirja och pojken i det rosa huset (2012)
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Lena Sjöberg
Lena Sjöberg (born 1970) graduated from Konstfack (University College of Arts, Crafts and Design) in 1996. Since then
she has been a freelance illustrator. Her debut as an author came in 2005 with the picturebook Hurman hittar en skatt
(Hurman Finds a Treasure) followed by Dom är sötast när dom sover (They Are Cutest When They Are Sleeping).
In 2009 Lena Sjöberg’s book Törnrosa (Sleeping Beauty) was recognised by Svensk Bokkonst for its artistry,
and in the following year, 2010, she was nominated for the August Prize for the book
Tänk om... (Imagine...). She received the Elsa Beskow Plaque in 2011.
Website: www.lenasjoberg.com
Photo: Johnny Franzén
What does a superhero have behind his/her back? A skateboard, and a
hand in plaster. The things you can’t see from the front are just as exciting,
as shown by the people, or characters, who are hiding something behind
their backs in Lena Sjöberg’s picturebook Vad har du bakom ryggen?, 2012
(What’s Behind Your Back?). The superhero, for example, has a grazed
forehead and scraped knees and the light blue of the superhero costume is
ripped at the knee and at the toes. And if you get about on a skateboard, a
bit of bloodshed is only to be expected when the board wants to go one
way and your body the other. What the sailor has behind his back is similarly
a perfect meta-comment worth examining in greater depth. Among thin
tattoos in blue of a heart with an arrow through it, a two-masted sailing
ship, a flower, a mermaid and a symbol of faith, hope and love, the sailor in
the Royal Navy has “mum” tattooed across his shoulder blades.
Slightly twisted logic is also the theme of the picturebook Tänk om …, 2010 (Imagine…). Each page
deals with a parent’s thoughts about what he/she would do for his/her child, all seen from the viewpoint of another animal, such as the hare, the spider or the mosquito. In stylised spreads, green for the
hare or blue for the spider, here too there are different interjections and meta-references in pictures and
text, which increase the intensity of the storytelling. The baby spider lies in a spider’s web hammock
reading Spiderman, whose unmistakable red mask and blue costume are replicated on the cover of the
comic. And on the wall of the bedbug’s condemned home is a poster for a flea circus, as well as a drawn
skull, graffiti and layers of torn wallpaper.
Lena Sjöberg has chosen to work with pictures in ink and gouache, which she sometimes colours on
the computer. They bear playful traces of woodcuts and Swedish folk art. Stronger or thinner lines shape
and give volume in the same way as a graphic artist carving a picture into the wood. Similarly the floral
ornamentation grows into the pictures such that the text areas are surrounded by stylised frames and the
pages with illustrations gain beautiful patterned borders like old-fashioned stencils, but digital.
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”What’s behind your back, Pirate? A Parrot!”
lena sjöberg
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From Vad har du bakom ryggen? (2010)
lena sjöberg
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From Tänk om... (2010)
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Pernilla Stalfelt
Pernilla Stalfelt (born 1962) is an author and illustrator with a rich and varied bibliography. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Art and
Literature Studies and attended Konstskolan Basis in 1988–1989, Gerleborgsskolan in Stockholm in 1990–1992 and Konstfack’s
animation course in 1997. She debuted in 1996 with Hårboken (The Hair Book), for which she received the Elsa Beskow Plaque (1997).
She has also received Rabén & Sjögren’s Astrid Lindgren Prize for her work (2004), the Klax-Award in Berlin and
the Heffaklumpen Award for Dödenboken (The Death Book) 2001. She was nominated for
Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis for The Death Book. Pernilla Stalfelt’s books have been translated into several languages.
Since 1992 she has also been working as an art teacher at Moderna Museet in Stockholm.
Photo: Karin Alfredson
Pernilla Stalfelt uninhibitedly plays with the way language uses standard
phrases to create the most ingenious imagery. Like the “dropped jaws”
in the picturebook Vem är du? En bok om tolerans, 2012 (Who are you?
A Book About Tolerance), a picturebook commissioned by the
organisation against hate-crime Teskedsorden – För tolerans, mot fanatism
– de mångas möjligheter och styrka (The Order of the Teaspoon – For tolerance,
against fanaticism). To show that the same and different are not always
what they say they are, Pernilla Stalfelt’s illustrations clash with the text.
With no respect for convention, she turns various concepts and interpretations on their head to shake up the reader’s assumptions of what
is being conveyed in different contexts. Visualising the concept of
“swallowing your anger” with an anatomical cross-section of the
oesophagus and a stomach is not just insanely funny, it’s clever too.
The ending of Fisksaga, 2001 (A Fish Story), a rhyming tale on the
theme of David and Goliath, with a change in size and number, is
uncertain. The characters are thirty-six fishes with different characteristics. The first seven fishes all swim
across the pages in the direction the pages are turned, before changing direction and going to meet their
fate. Like a crescendo, expectations are built up around the fishes’ untimely end, which are overturned
in a “snap” with the advance of their twenty-nine remaining cousins. The piranha’s fish in foil is a natural
hit with anyone desperately trying to get a child to eat up their dinner.
The ability to tell a good story often rests on getting the tiny but rarely unimportant details right.
In Lokvargen, 2000 (Wolf Monster), created with Pernilla Stalfelt’s nephew, Calle Stalfelt, the story is based
on an “illogicality”, a liberating ad hoc principle which defines the imaginary animal Lupus horribilis
(the wolf monster) in pictures and text. What the creature is, does and likes is explained by pointing out
the opposite, a deft twist on a story whose two-legged, horned and sharp-toothed protagonist finally
enjoys a loving meal with an even bigger friend of the same species.
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From Vem är du? En bok om tolerans (2012)
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From Fisksaga (2001)
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From Lokvargen (2000)
Anna-Clara Tidholm
Anna-Clara Tidholm (born 1946) is an author and illustrator who started out as a writer. She has produced a richly varied body
of work over the years. The Knacka på-series (Knock, Knock, Knock) has achieved great success around the world and is now considered a
classic of the genre. She received the Elsa Beskow Plaque in 1986, Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis for
Resan till Ugri-La-Brek (Journey to Ugri-La-Brek) in 1992, the Astrid Lindgren Prize in 1997 and
the August Prize for Adjö, Herr Muffin (Goodbye, Mr Muffin) in 2002.
Photo: Alfabeta
“Mum won’t say anything and dad doesn’t know anything!”. So
Hinken and Myran take matters into their own hands and head out
on a globe-trotting adventure together with their dog Strunt to find
out what has happened to grandpa Jonte in the poetic picturebook
Resan till Ugri-La-Brek, 1987 (Journey to Ugri-La-Brek), written by
Thomas Tidholm. And Ugri-La-Brek, otherwise known as the “Village
Where Smoke Goes Straight Up”, is where they find him, in a little
grey house with a fireplace, a world away from the flat where grandpa used to live. This is a story that unites the subjective experience of
grandpa’s disappearance and the unstated awareness of his death.
Together pictures and text allude to life and death with a variety of
hints and references, partly to do with time, but also symbolised by the
dark river the children row across, the twilight and the black birds.
An equally thought-provoking picturebook is Lanas land, 1996
(Lana’s Land), also written by Thomas Tidholm. The land is on the
other side of the water and Lana rows to it at night. There she is the queen and her “own little pig” Ogg
wanders over a wide open landscape with the other animals. But Ogg grows and devastates Lana’s land
when he tramples the other animals to death. In the illustrations he is shown as a big, solid, grey fantasy
creature. In the text Ogg is described as a concrete engine. Anna-Clara Tidholm draws an exquisite story
in black pencil with a sky with accents of blue, yellow and reddish orange, depending on the weather
and the time of day, also serving as a backdrop to Ogg’s growth and Lana’s emotions.
A journey through a book is exactly what happens in the picturebook Knacka på, 1992 (Knock, Knock,
Knock, 2009) an inventive interactive story in which the reading child goes through five doors, one red, one
green, one yellow, one white and one blue, before finally arriving back at the starting point. Behind each
door is a new room in which the next door is introduced, as well as figures and items playfully positioned.
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From Lanas land (1996)
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From Knacka på (1992)
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Ilon Wikland
Ilon Wikland (born 1930) came to Sweden as a 14 year-old refugee from Estonia. She trained at Konstfack (University College
of Arts, Crafts and Design) and the Signe Barth Art School, and in 1954 she was commissioned to illustrate
Mio min Mio (Mio, My Son) by Astrid Lindgren. Since then she has illustrated almost all of Astrid Lindgren’s books,
as well as those of Edith Unnerstad and many other authors. Ilon Wikland has received the
Elsa Beskow Plaque (1969), the Heffaklumpen Award (1986) and Illis Quorum (2002).
Photo: Casia Bromberg
Ilon Wikland portrays children, their experiences and their emotions in
a masterly way. Den långa, långa resan,1995 (The Long, Long Journey),
with text by Rose Lagercrantz, is a story with documentary content
whose illustrations visualise memories of Ilon Wikland’s childhood,
experiences and lessons learned during and after the Second World
War. The tale is an intimate story of joys and sorrows in which Ilon
Wikland’s soft pencil drawings encompass a lost idyll and cynical reality.
The little town with its church is drawn in shimmering green, while the
tanks and the raging war are in black and white. Pictures in colour stand
for being alive, something the little girl Ilon epitomises in her hospital
bed with coloured chalks and drawings spread all around her.
Sotis: en alldeles sann historia, 2012 (Sotis: An Absolutely True Story)
also conveys powerful memories. The clear colours are deftly balanced
against the black and white spreads and the different perspectives create
energetic movement between the soberly painted pictures. This is about the loss of a cat and the welcoming of a new one. As in the previous story, death takes centre stage here too. Ilon Wikland visualises
it without beating about the bush, showing blood, hope and doubt in body language and colour. When
Sessan, the first cat, has died everything is grey. But the colour returns slowly when the little black cat,
named Sotis, looks in through the terrace door.
Through a beautiful summer day, the little boy Olle looks for the dog Sammeli in the picturebook
Var är Sammeli?, 1995 (Where is Sammeli?). This is a game of hide-and-seek that starts and ends in a leafy
garden surrounded by tall pine trees. On the journey through the house in the hunt for Sammeli, who
is hiding behind and under different pieces of furniture, little, delicate, visual details can be seen. In the
living room the table is laid for tea, while in the mother’s room there is a bouquet of lilacs beside the
mirror on the dressing table with a pearl necklace on it. In the bathroom and in Olle’s room there are
drawings of a sun. The first is drawn straight onto the tiles with a red lipstick that lies beneath it on the
toilet seat. The second is a drawing hanging above Olle’s bed – and both are unmistakably alike.
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From Dem långa, långa resan (1995)
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From Sotis: en alldeles sann historia (2012)
Emma Virke
Emma Virke (born 1974) is an illustrator, visual artist and author. She studied at the Pernby Art School,
University of Kalmar and Arizona State University and has worked as a journalist, photographer
and graphic designer. Her work has appeared in a number of art exhibitions.
In 2009 she debuted as a children’s book illustrator with Mops, text by Eva Lindström, before publishing
her own books Brevet till månen (Letter to the Moon) and Memmo och Mysen söker efter färger
(Memmo and Mysen Look for Colours). She has received several awards and grants, including
the Silver Award in the Association of Swedish Illustrators and Graphic Designers’ competition
Kolla! 2010, a working grant from the Swedish Authors’ Fund 2010 and 2012,
and funding from the Swedish Arts Grants Committee 2012.
Photo: Snezana Vucetic Bohm
All cats are grey in the dark, as the saying goes. Against a
grey-black background the silhouette of a black cat with
yellow eyes pads past on the frontispiece of this picturebook. This is an effective introduction to Emma Virke’s tale
Memmo och Mysen söker efter färger, 2011 (Memmo and
Mysen Look for Colours), which starts in the middle of a
black night. No colours can be seen and Mysen, who thinks
this is a bit scary, calls to them: “Come out then colours,
if you dare.” The atmosphere is brightened with the help
of a torch. It casts a beam of light over the leaves, which are a pale green. But Memmo and his soft toy
Mysen have to wait for the sky to turn blue until the grey light of dawn has shifted to a purple, mauve,
violet, lilac and blueberries-in-milk morning light via a fiery red sunrise. It is a sensuous story, beautifully
bringing together the visual potential of linguistic expressions and the subtlety of the colours.
There are also the delightful little meta-comments, such as the flag in the sand castle, in fact part of a
packet of a well-known brand of liquorice, the garden gnome with his red hood and the green marzipan
cakes, all of which refer to a familiar contemporary Swedish context. As do the redcurrants, the black
and white magpie, the white cow parsley and the seagulls. Emma Virke also plays with the capital letters,
where, for example the P in “Plötsligt slocknar lampan …” (Suddenly the torch goes out), looks up
worriedly at Memmo and Mysen who are standing in the dark, fiddling with the torch.
The picturebook Brevet till månen, 2010 (Letter to the Moon) incorporates similar comments from
the author in the form of added details, such as a Swedish post box, the classic plastic bead necklace
and the equally recognisable espresso maker, whose design inspires thoughts of a space ship – as does
the Meccano. In this story Moa’s wish comes true: “Can I go to the moon?” she asks her parents who
are sitting in front of the television: “No you can’t. It’s ridiculously expensive!” they answer. But she
can. Moa, a girl in a checked pinafore dress with a red bow behind her ear puts on the green t-shirt and
brown trousers of the astronaut and takes her letter to the moon herself. With a mixture of drawing
and collage, Emma Virke finds a form of expression that simultaneously demonstrates and plays with
contemporary expressions, always with a touch of humour.
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From Memmo och Mysen söker efter färger (2011)
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From Brevet till månen (2010)
Stina Wirsén
Stina Wirsén (born 1968) studied at Konstfack (University College of Arts, Crafts and Design) in Stockholm 1985–1992.
Her work as an illustrator and cartoonist contributed to giving illustration a more prominent position in the daily press in
recent years, not least through her work as Chief Illustrator at the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
Her children’s books such as the Vem?-series (Who?) have been a huge success. Awards include one from
the Society of Scandinavian Illustrators 1999, the Heffaklumpen Award 2008 and
the Elsa Beskow Plaque in 2000. Stina Wirsén is also a member of
the Swedish Academy for Children’s Books.
Photo: Ulrica Zwenger
Stina Wirsén’s line drawings curve across the pages of her books
in flowing curlicues and flourishes. With a single stroke the deft,
graceful line forms a pattern and tells a story. The picturebook Leka
tre, 2005 (Three’s a Crowd), with text by Carin Wirsén, depicts with
pinpoint accuracy the complications that arise with the number
three, and how treacherous made-up rules can be. What unites the
girls Sara, Stina and Lina in a restricted twosome – and excludes
them from a potential trio – is at first their names, then the idea of
equal shares, before finally being about choice. This results in Stina,
holding the trump card, deciding that Sara is allowed to be with
her and Lina – as long as Stina gets to sit in the middle, that is. And
in the last picture that’s precisely where we see her.
The girls are superbly portrayed. On the cover Sara is wearing
a striped sweater, spotty tights and socks in one colour, and has
shoulder-length dead straight hair. She is tall and thin. Stina wears
a flowery dress, striped tights and socks. She is chubby and has
blonde curls. Lina has a fluffy sweater, spotty tights and socks in one colour. She has short hair and is
the smallest. Their external characters personify the linguistic logic that Sara and Stina exert to form a
two out of a three. Sara’s speech bubble is enclosed by a greenish yellow line while Stina’s line is pink.
And as for Lina, she is mostly caught between the two in this lovely story about conflict.
In the picturebook Vem är arg?, 2005 (Who’s Angry?) the cat wants to play with the teddy bear, who
says “mine” and sticks out the tongue. The cat’s anger and frustration are clear for all to see. With ears
pointing backwards, tail pointing straight out and teeth bared, the yellow body of the cat explodes
beyond its black contours. The teddy bear bashes the cat over the head with a building block. The cat is
very upset, crying loud howls, mouth open wide. But the cat returns to the attack, arches its back and
bites the teddy bear in the leg – and now it is teddy’s turn to be very upset. This evens out the trench
warfare, leading them, by way of a tall tower of building blocks, its collapse and a minor accident, to
give each other a hug. And in the end no one is angry.
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“Sara and Stina begin with an S. You can only play with us if you begin with an S. Lina can’t play with us.”
stina wirsén
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From Leka tre (2005)
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From Vem är arg? (2005)
Emelie Östergren
Emelie Östergren (born 1982) studied at Konstfack (University College of Arts, Crafts and Design) in Stockholm,
where she obtained a Bachelor’s degree in 2007. She also travelled to Berlin on a bursary from the school.
While there, she took up a placement with the comic book artist Lars Sjunnesson, and so she entered
the world of comics. Her comic strips and illustrations have been published in books,
anthologies, magazines and fanzines both in Sweden and abroad.
Website: www.emelieostergren.se
Photo: Ola Kjelbye
Emelie Östergren has her very own take on the world. The book
Evil Dress, 2009 contains 14 separate stories with and without text.
It should perhaps be described as a pictorial story rather than a
picturebook, although it is a book containing pictures. It opens
and closes with a reference to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland,
a story that has slightly surreal undertones. This is a feature repeated
in Emelie Östergren’s imagery, which also has Gothic influences.
The subjective fantasy world that she creates is the setting for the
various fragmentary tales, which offer both fear-tinged delight and
melancholy insight.
The story of The Dollhouse involves an attempt at communication. The bored girl in the pink dress asks the pipe-smoking dandy
whether they can do something, maybe play together. This leads
to her starting to move things around randomly, including the
books on the bookshelf, which she builds up around her while
the man smokes and smokes. In response to his silence, she sets
the curtains on fire, the armchairs and a bust of an angel, yielding
an immediate reaction in a torrent of insults as he tries to put out the fire. Her vain and repeated attempts
to resolve the impossible situation culminate in an ambivalent ending. Both characters sit on the floor in
front of a newly lit fire in the fireplace, him with his arm around her back.
A similar lack of resolution can be found in the series about the two girls in white dresses with sailor
collars. One girl grasps the other’s neck harder and harder, pushes her away, sets fire to her and finally
puts a conciliatory arm around the scorched girl. There is always a serious undertone in the subjective
choices that are made, filled as they are with an uncomfortable sense of total loneliness. Under the
apparently screwball surface there is always an honest and direct story. The way that Emelie Östergren
mixes the sweet with the grotesque, honesty with gallows humour, in strong and sparse images, is raw
and emotional, uncomfortable and charged, offering something for adults and young people alike.
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This and previous spread: From Evil dress (2009)
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Presentation of the Jury
Andreas Berg
Andreas Berg (born 1965) is an illustrator,
lecturer and writer. After studying at
Beckmans School of Design he spent ten
years working as a press illustrator, before
becoming the youngest ever Professor of
Illustration at Konstfack, where he worked
for ten years. Since leaving Konstfack he
has been writing the history of Swedish
illustration in various ways. He is also a
lecturer and runs a course in illustration
at Berghs School of Communication in
Stockholm. Andreas Berg tends to say that
illustration is an intellectual pursuit.
Elina Druker
Elina Druker is a researcher in literature
at Stockholm University with a particular
interest in picturebooks and the history
of illustration. Her thesis in 2008 was on
modernism in the Nordic picturebook
and she has published books and articles
on children’s literature in Sweden and
abroad. She works as a literature critic
for the national newspaper Svenska
Dagbladet, is the editor of the series of
books “Children’s Literature, Culture, and
Cognition” at John Benjamins publishing
company in Amsterdam and since 2011
has been a member of the Astrid Lindgren
Memorial Award (ALMA) jury.
Ann Forslind
Ann Forslind was born in Gothenburg in
1953. She has been a freelance illustrator
since the mid-1970s. She made her picturebook debut in 1986. Since then she has
published almost 50 titles, half of which
she has written as well as illustrated. She
won the Elsa Beskow Plaque in 2001. Ann
Forslind is also a member of the Swedish
Academy for Children’s Books and a
lecturer in illustration at Konstfack (University College of Arts, Craft and Design).
Note: Ann Forslind participated in the
discussion on the focus and theme but since she
is one of the selected illustrators she declared a
conflict of interest and did not participate
in the final selection.
Gunna Grähs
Gunna Grähs (born 1954) trained at
Konstfack in Stockholm. She is active as
an illustrator, designer and picturebook
writer, including her own series HejHej
(Hello There). Since making her debut in
1982 with Jullan vill vara med (Jullan Wants
to Come Too), text by Kjell Johansson,
Gunna Grähs has published over 50 titles,
mainly picturebooks with text by herself
and others, but also comics and nonfiction books. Awards include the Adamson
Statuette, the Elsa Beskow Plaque,
Expressen’s Heffaklumpen Award for children’s literature and the Kulla-Gulla Prize.
Note: Gunna Grähs participated in
the discussion on the focus and theme but since
she is one of the selected illustrators she declared
a conflict of interest and did not participate
in the final selection.
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Dag Hernried
Publisher Dag Hernried has owned the
publishing house Alfabeta Bokförlag for
almost 35 years. Alfabeta Bokförlag publishes books for all ages, from children to
adults. Having grown up with a librarian
and a photographer as parents, he has a
keen interest in how to tell stories through
a combination of text and pictures.
Picturebooks have therefore always been
a key element of Alfabeta’s output. Dag
Hernried sees the international side of
his work, the extensive contact with
colleagues in other countries, as hugely
important and inspiring – both as a way to
embrace new influences and to spread the
work of our outstanding authors and illustrators around the globe.
Kristina Hoas
Kristina Hoas founded and runs the publishing company Alvina, which publishes
ecolabelled children’s and young adult
literature, with a focus on picturebooks.
Since her first job at the textbook publisher
Liber Utbildning in 1994, Kristina has
worked with books in many roles for
several different publishers – always with
high quality, storytelling illustrations as
an important component. Kristina Hoas
is also a guest lecturer on the picturebook course held every autumn at
HDK – School of Design and Crafts at
the University of Gothenburg.
Note: Kristina Hoas participated in the
discussion on the focus and theme but declared
a conflict of interest and did not participate
in the final selection.
Isabella Nilsson
Isabella Nilsson is director of the Gothenburg Museum of Art and was previously
director of Millesgården, Uppsala Art
Museum and Mölndal Art Museum. She
has lectured in picture analysis and comics
on a range of courses in the visual arts. As
culture editor at the newspaper GT and
former editor-in-chief of the art magazine
Paletten and art reviewer for newspaper
Göteborgsposten – she has also written
articles about children’s book illustration
and comics.
Ulla Rhedin
Ulla Rhedin (born 1946) received her PhD
in literature with her thesis Bilderboken –
på väg mot en teori, 1992, 2001 (The Picturebook – Towards a Theory). Active as a
researcher, lecturer and writer in Sweden
and the Nordic countries, for many years
she led the interdisciplinary university
course Children and Literature, and was
the picturebook critic for national newspaper Dagens Nyheter for thirty years. She
is one of the editors of a book examining
the picturebook as a work of art in a Nordic context (to be published in autumn
2013), in which she advocates that the
term “illustration” should be replaced by
“narrative picturebook picture” and that
the picturebook can be seen as an independent, aesthetic, verbovisual medium
with a theoretical home in the intermedial
field of research. Ulla Rhedin is also a
member of the jury for the Astrid Lindgren
Memorial Award (ALMA), since 2002.
Åsa Warnqvist
Åsa Warnqvist received her PhD in literature in 2007 and holds a postdoctoral
position at Stockholm University. She has
a special interest in children’s literature,
and she is the editor of the only Swedish
academic journal on children’s literature,
Barnboken (Journal of Children’s Literature
Research). She has published articles on
current trends in Swedish children’s
literature, on Swedish picturebook artist
Pija Lindenbaum, and on Canadian writer
L. M. Montgomery (internationally
renowned for her Anne of the Green
Gables book series), as well as editing a
volume of Swedish reading responses to
Montgomery’s fiction. Warnqvist is also
a critic and former editor of children’s
literature in the Swedish daily newspaper
Svenska Dagbladet.
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Birgitta Westin
Birgitta Westin has been a publisher at
Rabén & Sjögren since 1999 and was
previously employed at Natur & Kultur,
Bonnier Carlsen and Alfabeta. She primarily publishes original Swedish books
– picturebooks, non-fiction and anthologies – and works with several of Sweden’s
foremost authors and illustrators, sometimes also with foreign copyright holders,
including, this year, Benjamin Chaud and
Kitty Crowther. In 1993 she was a member
of the international jury for the Illustrators
Exhibition at the Bologna Bookfair.
Birgitta Westin has lectured on the
modern Swedish picturebook in many
international contexts and has also given
lectures on the life and work of Astrid
Lindgren. These include a speech at the
Swedish-Chinese children’s book symposium at the World Expo in Shanghai
2010, and lectures in a series of seminars
on the Swedish children’s book at the
Swedish Embassy in Tokyo.
Emma Adbåge Pija Lindenbaum
Lisen Adbåge Eva Lindström
Siri Ahmed Backström Sara Lundberg
Anna Bengtsson Jan Lööf
Ida Björs Jockum Nordström
Karin Cyrén Sven Nordqvist
Clara Dackenberg Klara Persson
Helena Davidsson Charlotte Ramel
Neppelberg Matilda Ruta
Eva Eriksson Lena Sjöberg
Ann Forslind Pernilla Stalfelt
Gunna Grähs Anna-Clara Tidholm
Joanna Hellgren Ilon Wikland
Anna Höglund Emma Virke
Maria Jönsson Stina Wirsén
Olof Landström Emelie Östergren