Kuningattaren viitta ja muita kiperiä kysymyksiä

The style of Maria Vuorio’s books demands quiet concentration – but you could get quite hooked on their slow, thoughtful, gentle story-telling. Vuorio carries on the tradition of classic animal fables, following in the footsteps of Hans Christian Andersen, but with a personal twist. She is masterful in describing different emotional states – whether evoking the inner lives of humans or of anthropomorphised animals. Her stories and fairy tales hand the reader a magnifying glass that brings into view even the smallest, most insignificant creature or thing. The entire universe is present in the stories, for example when an earthworm ponders the meaning of life, a bear breaks into the National Museum, or a noxious insect imperils cultural exchange between Finland and Denmark. Talvitie has drawn an allegorical picture for each tale.
Translated by Fleur Jeremiah and Emily Jeremiah

Evoluutio

This non-fiction book, intended for 8- to 14-year-olds, takes as its main character Charles Darwin, who as a child begins to ponder where people came from. Various myths about the origins of the world, achievements of European natural historians and problems of early evolutionary theorists are explored briefly but elucidatingly; they are linked to the acquisition of new knowledge as the church fathers continue to trust in the Bible. The prehistory of the Earth, evolution and natural selection, animal populations, man and his ancestors are explained with the aid of plentiful and humorous illustrations. Scientific results are interestingly presented, but a separate fact box, for example, on the structure of the cell or the nature of DNA might have been useful. In the last picture, the 200,000-year-old Homo sapiens is seen scrawling his cave paintings: ‘so long as we are genetically unique individuals, our evolution will never cease’.
Translated by Hildi Hawkins

Jättityttö ja Pirhonen

Hannele Huovi and Kristiina Louhi, two eminent professionals in the field of children’s literature, have been collaborating for a long time. Their mutual trust is reflected in the way they grant each other artistic freedom, at times submitting to the text, at others to the illustrations. The depiction of the love story between a giant girl and a tiny man was an exceptional challenge for the illustrator; Tyyne’s tears nearly drown her tiny friend, and to see him properly, she needs a magnifying glass! Louhi has again kept her style economical, and she boldly paints large expanses of colour and forms. Alongside the unequal but happy love story, this picture book deals with tolerance. Tyyne’s enormous size effectively manifests her feeling that she is an outsider. The book also advocates a relaxed attitude to life and the avoidance of unnecessary strain. The example of the giant girl helps the reader to develop a sense of proportion and to realise the value of the everyday.
Translated by Fleur Jeremiah and Emily Jeremiah

Auringon lapsia

It is great news that Leena Krohn has not abandoned the young readership she first addressed through her first book Vihreä vallankumous (‘The green revolution’, 1970), an ecocritical title that also touched on active citizenship. This novel, too, is about the encounter between man and nature. Ten-year-old Orvokki (Violet) is a delivery girl for a florist; like her, the reader is incited to marvel with naive curiosity at life’s various wonders. Krohn is supremely good at writing literature that knows no age limits. Nothing here will go over a child’s head; the essence of the book is accessible to all. In this nicely old-fashioned children’s novel the measured language and expression are pleasing both to the eye and the ear. The hand-coloured graphic prints by the artist (and writer’s sister) Inari Krohn are a homage to Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717), the German natural scientist and illustrator who produced life-like paintings of insects and plants.
Translated by Fleur Jeremiah and Emily Jeremiah

Korson purppuraruusu

Sometimes a book’s appearance is enough to win the reader over. The first children’s novel by writer and film critic Tuuve Aro (born 1973) encourages the belief that things will work out for the best. The book’s positive undertones are also reflected in Mander’s fresh illustrations, which exude retro-nostalgia for the 1950s and 1960s in shades of orange, black, and brown. Tallulah, a jungle princess, turns up unexpectedly to sort out the complicated affairs of Topi, a schoolboy who is being bullied. Tallulah comes into the suburb of Korso from the silver screen, out of Woody Allen’s film The Purple Rose of Cairo. The jungle princess helps Topi to see the bleak suburb as an exotic habitat where adventures are waiting just round the corner. The adult reader gets to enjoy a few carefully chosen references to major cinematic landmarks. Aro eschews problem-centred realism and angst, even though the children’s problems are an indirect result of decisions taken by adults. The Tallulah figure incorporates a hefty dose of anarchy, familiar from Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking.
Translated by Fleur Jeremiah and Emily Jeremiah

Sari Airola's illustration in Silva och teservisen som fick fötter (‘Silva and the tea set that took to its feet’, Schildts) by Sanna Tahvanainen

The future of book publishing is not easy to predict. Books for children and young people are still produced in large quantities, and there’s no shortage of quality, either. But will the books find their readers? Päivi Heikkilä-Halttunen takes a look at the trends of 2011, while in the review section we’ve picked out a selection of last year’s best titles

The supply of titles for children and young adults is greater than ever, but the attention the Finnish print media pays to them continues to diminish. Writing about this genre appears increasingly ghettoised, featuring only in specialist publications or internet chat rooms and blogs.

Yet, defying the prospect of a recession, Suomen lastenkirjakauppa, a bookshop specialising in children’s literature, was re-established in central Helsinki in autumn 2011, following a ten-year break. Pro lastenkirjallisuus – Pro barnlitteraturen ry, the Finnish society for the promotion of children’s literature, has been making efforts to found a Helsinki centre dedicated to writing and illustration for children. The society made progress in this ambition when it organised a pilot event in May 2011.

The Finnish publishing sector is undergoing changes, which also have an impact on books for children and young adults – even though such developments are not trumpeted. The number of small independents and self-publishers continues to grow. At their best, their products do not necessarily lag behind those of the big publishing houses. Even so, the professional editorial skills and long-standing expertise of the major publishers are reflected in quality as well as in the level of investment, both of which are increasingly consistent. But smaller publishers, too, reap fame and fortune through prizes and nominations. Karisto was particularly successful in 2011; over the last few years, it has invested in domestic books for children and young adults with renewed enthusiasm.

It remains to be seen how the recent merger of the two Finland-Swedish publishers, Schildts and Söderströms, will affect the amount of Finnish-Swedish children’s literature that is published. This language area has seen the emergence of many new and distinctive authors of picture books in particular.

The serial format has been on the increase since 2000, but it may soon be on the wane; authors themselves are already publicly and extensively questioning the excessive concentration on series. Domestic writing continues to reflect the popularity of fantasy, while authors are fortunately displaying growing willingness to replace international narrative patterns with variations on home-grown Finnish folklore. For example, Ritva Toivola makes use of ghost stories and folk tales in her historical novel for young adults, Anni unennäkijä (‘Anni the dreamer’, Tammi). In her collection of tales, Lymyvuoren peikot, (‘The trolls of Skulk Mountain’, Tammi, illustrated by Christel Rönns), Eija Simonen dives into the underground world of trolls and, at the same time, into the human unconscious.

Dystopia, fantasy that reaches out into the future, is clearly on the way to becoming a new and trendy subgenre of domestic fantasy. The best examples include Annika Luther’s De hemlösas stad (‘The city of the homeless’, Söderströms), as well as Routasisarukset (‘The frost children’,WSOY), the splendid opening volume of Anne Leinonen and Eija Lappalainen’s fantasy trilogy. Both novels contain trenchant criticism of society and of the destruction of nature.

The realistic novel for young adults is clearly going through a critical stage. The number of self-contained (non-serial) novels for young people is decreasing. This literary genre needs new, young authors, bolder than their predecessors, to work alongside old hands. In addition to descriptions of traditional growing pains, there is interest in topical subjects. For example, Marja-Leena Tiainen’s novel Kahden maailman tyttö (‘The girl from two worlds’, Tammi) addresses cultural differences and the adaptation of an immigrant to her new surroundings. The work deserved as much media attention as Layla, a comparable novel for adults by Jari Tervo.

Vilja-Tuulia Huotarinen’s Valoa valoa valoa (‘Light light light’, Karisto), which won last year’s Finlandia Junior Prize, provoked sharp exchanges on the internet, as some older readers disapproved of the novel’s uninhibited depiction of sexuality. In fact, it is a good sign that literature aimed at older teenagers is coming close to matching the diversity of adult literature, and Huotarinen’s work satisfies the literary taste of the most demanding of adult readers.

Translated by Fleur Jeremiah and Emily Jeremiah

The author, a scholar and critic, specialises in books for children and young adults. She runs a blog (in Finnish), in which she reviews new books for children and young adults

Review section:

Tuuve Aro: Korson purppuraruusu (‘The purple rose of Korso’, WSOY)

Vilja-Tuulia Huotarinen: Valoa valoa valoa (‘Light light light’, Karisto)

Hannele Huovi & Krsitiina Louhi: Jättityttö ja Pirhonen (‘The giand girl and Mr Pirhonen’, Tammi)

Jani Kaaro: Evoluutio (‘Evolution’, Avain)

Leena Krohn: Auringon lapsia (‘Children of the sun’, Teos)

Annika Luther: De hemlösas stad / Kodittomien kaupunki (‘The city of the homeless’, Söderströms)

Sanna Tahvanainen & Sari Airola: Silva och teservisen som fick fötter / Silva ja teekalusto joka sai jalat alleen (‘Silva and the tea set that took to its feet’, Schildts)

Marja-Leena Tiainen: Kahden maailman tyttö (‘The girl from two worlds’, Tammi)

Maria Vuorio: Kuningattaren viitta ja muita kiperiä kysymyksiä (‘The queen’s cloak and other knotty issues’, Tammi)

Silva och teservicen som fick fötter

Silva ja teeastiasto joka sai jalat alleen
Suomennos [Translation from Swedish into Finnish]: Jyrki Kiiskinen
Helsinki: Schildts, 2011. 32 p.
ISBN 978-951-50-2054-3
€ 21.20, hardback

Sari Airola’s ability to depict different emotions makes her one of the most interesting Finnish illustrators of children’s books. Airola has long lived in Hong Kong and one can often sense an oriental spirit in her work. In this book, she makes use of Asian textile printing plates to enliven the surfaces of the images. The subject of this debut children’s book by Tahvanainen (born 1975), who is also a poet and novelist, evokes empathy with family situations that deviate from the norm. Silva lives in a big house with her mother, an isolated control freak and migraine sufferer. When her mother suffers an episode, Silva is unable to establish any contact with her and feels insecure. Although the text is allegorical, the book’s message, which concerns a parent’s caring responsibilities and a child’s need to be loved, remains accessible to children. Once the migraine attack is over, the mother goes out to look for Silva; mother and daughter are reconciled when Silva, at last, puts her fears into words.
Translated by Fleur Jeremiah and Emily Jeremiah

Portrait of the author: Leena Krohn, watercolour by Marjatta Hanhijoki (1998, WSOY)

In many of Leena Krohn’s books metamorphosis and paradox are central. In this article she takes a look at her own history of reading and writing, which to her are ‘the most human of metamorphoses’. Her first book, Vihreä vallankumous (‘The green revolution’, 1970), was for children; what, if anything, makes writing for children different from writing for adults?

Extracts from an essay published in Luovuuden lähteillä. Lasten- ja nuortenkirjailijat kertovat (‘At the sources of creativity. Writings by authors of books for children and young people’, edited by Päivi Heikkilä-Halttunen; The Finnish Institute for Children’s Literature & BTJ Kustannus, 2010)

What is writing? What is reading? I can still remember clearly the moment when, at the age of five, I saw signs become meanings. I had just woken up and taken down a book my mother had left on top of the chest of drawers, having read to us from it the previous day. It was Pilvihepo (‘The cloud-horse’) by Edith Unnerstad. I opened the book and as my eyes travelled along the lines, I understood what I saw. It was a second awakening, a moment of sudden realisation. I count that morning as one of the most significant of my life.

Learning to read lights up books. The dumb begin to speak. The dead come to life. The black letters look the same as they did before, and yet the change is thrilling. Reading and writing are among the most human of metamorphoses.

Soon after that morning, I opened another book, a collection of poems by Saima Harmaja. My mother used to recite to us a few lines from one of the poems, ‘Nuori enkeli’ (‘The young angel’), by way of an evening prayer. But she had never read aloud the stanza that I now read. It is engraved on my memory: ‘How hard was the journey, how bewildered the brain / As one the world spoke, in the language of pain’. I felt I understood what was meant by those words, though at that point I had seen so little.

The third important book of my early childhood was my sister Inari’s first-year reading book, which also taught basic arithmetic. There was a short story in it about a girl who was given six cherries, delicacies I myself had never laid eyes on. The girl was supposed to share the cherries with her sister, but she claimed she had been given only four cherries. She gave two to her sister, and ate up four herself.

To me, this was like a thriller or a horror story. As a five-year-old who had learnt to share everything equally with my sister, I had never read of a more appalling crime. I began to see that there was a difference between right and wrong and that a person needed to learn what the difference was if she wanted to avoid suffering a great deal, and causing others to suffer.

Reading was the most important thing in my life when I was at school. I would never have called it a hobby, though; it was something much greater and more important than that. Going to school was secondary, and that showed in my marks; I was always a poor student, right up until sixth form. A musical child knows early on that she’s in training for her future career, but I had no idea. I wasn’t in training to be a writer; I read for the sheer pleasure of it. Of course, I later understood that it’s only through reading that you learn how to write. And I didn’t feel the need to talk about what I’d read to anyone else; books were too private for that. It is with books, and not people, that I spent the most pleasurable moments of my life.

Around the time I was learning to read, we were given Zacharias Topelius’s Lukemisia lapsille (‘Reader for children’) in a deluxe edition illustrated by Finnish and Swedish artists. I was still reading it when I was at my single-sex secondary school in Helsinki, along with the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen. Andersen is still one of my great role models. It is often said that children need happy endings. Just last summer, I reread Andersen and realised how amazingly often his stories end unhappily, at least in the conventional sense. Children die in them, and so do lovers, and the one who loves the most stays behind, alone. And still the stories provoke hope and insight.

Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, which I was given as a seven-year-old, is still among the books that are most dear to me. Many of the scenes in the book will stay in my mind forever. Some of them are fast-paced and funny, like the japes and scrapes of the conceited Toad. Others possess the pure magic of poetry. For example, the scene in which Mole feels homesick. His abandoned former home sends him a message, which he obeys. There’s also the Water Rat’s wanderlust, the lure of the unknown South, and the words of the wayfaring rat: ‘I will linger, and look back; and at last I will surely see you coming, eager and light-hearted, with all the South in your face!’

In his work, Grahame captures the sacredness of experience and the spirit of nature. This places his work in a higher and nobler class of children’s literature – and world literature.

I don’t see a clear difference between writing for children and writing for adults. It’s just that when I write for children, I’m writing for everyone; when I write for adults, I’m only writing for some people. In everything I write, I try to be ‘brief, clear, and rich’, to quote Andersen. The question ‘What is true?’ is fundamental to my life.

During the morning devotions at school, we would often sing: ‘Spirit of truth, guide us’. And in our reading book, we were our told: ‘Child, shun lies, always tell the truth. Always tell the truth, in play and in earnest’. At the beginning of the 20th century, the realists thought you should only write what is true. How can a writer who writes mainly fantasy, or something called sci-fi, abide by such instructions? In my view, it’s not impossible. Art is a game and a lie, but as such, it approaches truth. That’s the paradox of art.

Literary fiction couldn’t exist without imagination or rational thought. In my opinion, the imagination is the basis of all rationality. It is also the basis of conscience. A person needs to be able to imagine the consequences of her actions both for herself and others. Art or literature cannot, then, be separated from moral choices.

Reality, and above all the human world, is made up of impossible connections. Fiction and reality exist in a symbiotic relationship. What could be clearer proof of this than money, which once again has recently betrayed its unstable, ghostly, and fictional nature? It’s quicksand, and something even more deceptive. I’ve termed such phenomena tribars, after the impossible objects devised by the physicist Roger Penrose. A tribar is an image of human reality, which brings together truth and untruth, symbol and matter, rationality and irrationality, to form a construction that is logically impossible.

My books do not exactly take place at a certain time or in a certain place. Like Angelus Silesius, I believe that you are not in a place; rather, the place is in you. I don’t see myself as writing national literature, nor have I ever dreamt of writing the great contemporary novel. I have always wanted to write short books that nonetheless have the spirit of truth in them. National literature was at one time necessary to create a spirit of togetherness for a new state, and a collective symbolism, but I believe that it has had its day. It is sometimes said that all good literature is political. Maybe so, but then good literature is also always cosmopolitan.

It cannot be denied, however, that place shapes people in powerful ways, since memories are of course anchored in place and time. Place, time, and language are the foundations of identity. Of necessity, a writer draws on her own life experiences when writing, even if they are not obviously apparent in her books. All of one’s personal history, all of one’s life experience – and that includes what one has read – are there in the writing. You don’t have to go and write about things you haven’t personally had contact with – but I use ‘personally’ in a very wide sense. Still, writing is for me a forgetting of the self – the individual abandoning herself to the greater sum of things. In writing you go back and forth between private and public zones. You can only relate the most private things publicly, and in a common language.

I think of world literature as both shared and indivisible. Children’s literature is also world literature. All literature involves sharing and reciprocity, giving and receiving gifts. All works, whether they are written for children or adults, in whatever language and country, form one and same world literature, in which all works exist in relation to each other. Completely autonomous works don’t exist, and every book has many authors, both dead and alive. Literature is intellectual capital that is not used up or diminished through distribution.

The first obligation of the writer is to write as well as possible. In fact, thinking about it, that is the writer’s only obligation.

Translated by Emily Jeremiah

Tove Jansson (1914–2001) had begun to write and illustrate her Moomin stories for children in the late 1940s. In 1959 she was commissioned to illustrate the Swedish-language translation of Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark (1874), about an ‘inconceivable creature’, the Snark, for the Finland-Swedish publisher Schildts.

After illustrating The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien in 1962, Jansson then took on Carroll’s best-known book, Alice‘s Adventures in Wonderland, which was published in 1966 (see the pictures here).

The English-language original of Alice with her illustrations was then published in 1977 by Delacorte Press. Tate has now made Tove Jansson’s witty, perceptive visions of Alice available again, while the Snark with her original illustrations has now been printed in English for the first time.

Kissataksi

Children’s novels with a humane, everyday approach like that of Kissataksi are few and far between. Juho is a skinny eight-year-old boy with a perfect life: pleasant parents, a nice little brother and a dog called Rekku. But one day, he comes across seven cats and an old biddy – and find that the cats have a plan to alleviate her gloom. Juho finds himself driving a taxi for the cats, who are searching for a reliable carer for their mistress, and soon Juho is joined by Virsu, a punk girl. Kissataksi charms the reader with its genial child’s pace. Understanding of displaced people, and empathy in general, have been sadly lacking in children’s literature in recent years. The title of this book is a homage to the Japanese master animator Hayao Miyazaki’s film My Neighbour Totoro, in which a cat bus figures significantly. As in Peltoniemi’s previous novels for children and young people, there is a pinch of magic in this book.
Translated by Ruth Urbom

Sinisen kärpäsen sirkus ja muita runoja naapurinötököistä

Reetta Niemelä has provided a breath of fresh air in Finnish children’s poetry with her collections Makkarapiruetti (‘Sausage pirouette’, 2005) and Kakaduu (‘Cockatooo’, 2009), whose onomatopoeic sounds and whimsical grammar are reminiscent of children’s language play as they learn to speak. This book opens up the secrets of the world of earthworms and the tiniest of insects to the reader, revealing natural wonders at (literally) grass-roots level. The most delightful aspect, however, is to be found in its illustrations: Salla Savolainen employs a painstaking, richly nuanced woodcut technique, which puts a natural finishing touch to the collection. This sort of delicacy has not been seen in children’s book illustration in a very long time! Savolainen’s images seem light, breezy and lively – each little bug has its own charismatic personality.
Translated by Ruth Urbom

Taro maan ytimessä

Illustrator Jussi Kaakinen (born 1978) is known for, among other things, his illustrations for the graphic novel version of Risto Isomäki’s sci-fi work Sarasvatin hiekkaa (‘The sands of Sarasvati’, 2008) and two children’s non-fiction books, Suomen lasten historia (‘A Finnish children’s history’, 2005) and Suomen lasten taidehistoria (‘A Finnish children’s art history’, 2009). Taro maan ytimessä is his first picture book in his own right. Kaakinen employs an experimental illustration style here, borrowing from comic book techniques, to create an appropriately fast-paced text. The children in the story are curious to find out whether they can dig deep enough in their sandbox to reach the other side of the world. Taro has a bear for a friend who constructs a machine out of old junk that can dig into the Earth and then into outer space. On their daredevil journey, the pair encounter a greedy monster worm with a sweet tooth. Their adventure ends when Taro returns home, although the space worm, making a racket in the sewers, ought to be hidden from his parents…. Taro maan ytimessä is a pacey, visually striking adventure that will be especially enthralling to boys.
Translated by Ruth Urbom

Pikku Nunuun löytöretki

Petra Heikkilä (born 1976) is a visual artist and author. Her debut title, an illustrated children’s book entitled Mikko Kettusen pupupöksyt (‘Micky Fox’s bunny pants’, 2001), was nominated for the Finlandia Junior prize in 2001. Heikkilä’s practice of portraying children as animal characters is based on their facial expressions – particularly their luminous eyes. Typical features of all eight of her picture books  published so far include a warm sense of humour, wordplay and the use of collage techniques in the illustrations. At the centre of this tale set in Africa is a kanga cloth, which can be twisted and wound in a variety of ways, and Nunuu, a little lion girl who learns about the inventive uses for kanga. The rich image textures utilise collage and photographs, as well as characters painted on Ugandan barkcloth.
Translated by Ruth Urbom

Pikku Papu

In 2009, Finnish publisher Tammi launched its Tammenterho (‘Acorn’) series of picture books written by established Finnish authors to run along its Tammen Kultaiset kirjat (Tammi Golden Books series, modelled after a US imprint dating back to the 1940s). Pikku Papu is a jolly wandering tale for the smallest children. Papu the Tortoise notices that his shell, which he left on the beach while he went for a swim, has shrunk. In his search for a solution to his problem, he encounters a number of animals. Papu tries to cover himself with a glove he finds on the beach, but it proves to be too warm, and an eggshell he is given by a bird cracks. Fortunately, of course, everything works out in the end. This gentle story lets children identify colours and shapes and recognise various animals. The collage illustrations are attractive, and the text is simple, calmly told and appropriately short.
Translated by Ruth Urbom

There have been plenty of books for beginning readers with action-packed plots full of breathtaking twists and turns. Fortunately there are still books that leave room for a more ‘easy does it’ reading style. One of them is this, the sixth title in Tapani Bagge’s series about a girl called Kaisa. Kaisa travels to the countryside with her father and her father’s partner Sirkka. Their journey is overshadowed by the death of Kaisa’s grandmother, and the little girl believes that nothing at her grandma’s place will ever be the same again. Bagge’s extensive work on this material is evident in his spare, finely tuned prose. He portrays the grieving girl’s differing shades of emotion beautifully. Kaisa believes that her grandma has changed into a butterfly following her death. So the butterfly fluttering around in the attic needs to be saved – but this of course has further-reaching consequences…. Hannamari Ruohonen’s black-and-white illustrations provide a lovely depiction of care and protection in the family.
Translated by Ruth Urbom