Focus on Finnish Writers

Jukka Itkonen," Into Kiemura the Magician" (Taikuri Into Kiemura, Otava 2007).

“It’s rain-gutter time. Cleaning out rain-gutters is a lot of work,” says Emil, the narrator in Let’s Go Home Now (Mennään jo kotiin, Tammi), the newest book by writer Riina Katajavuori and illustrator Salla Savolainen. The text is placed within a large illustration that doesn’t feature the boy or the rain-gutters, but rather his toy-filled room. The first-person narrator is not pictured when it is the girl Mirjam’s turn to speak, either. Instead the figure of her mother lying on the bed serves to anchor the story to the text:

“Mom had an operation on a strained tendon, and now she lies on the bed and rests and isn’t busy all the time. I ride a broom around through all the rooms and now and then I take a breather and lie down beside her on the camel blanket, and we talk, and I ask her about things I’ve been thinking about. Mom, are there such things as wolves? Are there wolves in Africa? But not in Finland, right? Are there wolves in people’s houses?”

Words and pictures need not follow the very same path. Authors and illustrators can offer an enterprising child pictures of a child’s room in a Finnish home, for example, side by side with fundamental questions about life. This leaves some space, that open space so loved by literary theorists, for readers to compose their own interpretations. In small test groups, it was just these divergent routes taken by the words and the pictures in Katajavuori and Savolainen’s books about home that seemed to stimulate readers to create a parallel narrative, spurring their imaginations to break into a gallop.

Katajavuori’s text occupies the everyday world, but one can also recognize the poet in the narrative, a voice that asks, in the middle of an everyday situation, whether there are such things as wolves and angels, imagines sinewy mermaids, and ponders over “whether it’s normal for a child to see visions”. The pictures are based on a realistic view of an actual Finnish home of today. At the same time, they are full of abundant details and minute elements that serve as points of departure, leading the reader right up to the threshold of their own elaboration of the story.

In spite of the divergent routes taken by word and image, the text and illustrations in a picture book are organically interrelated. As literary critic Roland Barthes said back in the 1960s, the relationship between text and illustration in a picture book alternates-- each may utilize different methods, sometimes one element comes to the fore, sometimes the other, but both elements are needed to create the desired effect. And as Katajavuori and Savolainen’s books demonstrate, at its best the interplay between word and image creates something completely new.

Much is left to the imagination in Päivi Franzon and Sari Airola’s newest book, Snowbird Child (Muuttolintulapsi, Lasten Keskus) as well. It is the story of a lonely child who dreams of returning to the warmth of her homeland, like a migrating bird, on wings that she has built herself. The power of imagination can be considerable. And in the narration there is little distinction made between reality and fantasy. The little girl Anna flies, somehow, far away to the friendly land and back to the snow-covered country where she lives. The worlds of the real and the imagined also fuel the splendid, color-saturated illustrations. The real, lonely Anna changes from black and white to color only when she comes into contact with her former happy life.

Franzon and Airola’s beautiful story brings to mind an inversion of the traditional division of labor. In some passages it is almost as if the rich, metaphorical language were illustrating the story and the pictures were carrying the plot in their own direction. The collaborators put their own stamp on the work, a stamp already apparent in their earlier work. They also latch onto timely themes with enthusiasm, including the difficult themes of loneliness, as in their most recent book, or understanding death from a child’s point of view, as in their earlier work, Sad boots (Surusaappaat, 2006).

Among this autumn’s offerings there are also picture books whose illustrations are full of abundant facts. In these, the burden of information is often lightened through humor. In Aino Havukainen and Sami Toivonen’s Finlandia Junior-awarded book Tatu and Patu’s Finland (Tatun ja Patun Suomi, Otava), the text’s description of how Finland gained its independence is unusual and entertaining, but the book as a whole gains its superlative humor from its playful, high-spirited illustrations. The adventure for the kids is mainly in the slapstick humor, while for adults it lies in spotting the amusing intertextualities and Finland clichés amid the jungle of images. As in much of his earlier work, a similar combination of information and humor can be found in Tales from Doghill (Koiramäen lapset ja näkki, Otava) the most recent book by writer and illustrator by Mauri Kunnas, Finland’s most translated children’s author.

Both children and adults will find strength in Christel Rönns’ humorous illustrations and Jukka Itkonen’s splendid stanzas in Into Kiemura the Magician (Taikuri Into Kiemura, Otava), which has also been nominated for the Finlandia Junior prize. The book is an ambitious presentation of various professions wonderfully illustrated in shades of pink, violet, and retro floral patterns. The piano and the magician of the text are rhythmic signposts that move across the surface of the story in Rönns’ skillful layout.

Traveler Far and Wide (Joka kolkan kulkija, Lasten Keskus), the first collaboration between Tanja Poskela and Marjo Nygård-Niemistö, is a beautiful book that is educational in the best sense. It is a story set in a world of insensitivity, of those too hurried to take notice of the needs of others. The words and pictures in this book also give each other room to move, but the collaboration has a universality that is visible in the timeless themes of the text as well as in the colors and fine drawing of the illustrations. One can easily imagine that the character of the traveler who brings shining pearls as a gift to the joyless cities would transfer well to many cultures. It is a message that touches all people and all times:
“A friendly, encouraging deed never costs you a thing, but with it you can give someone a pearl, a little miracle.”

Characters suitable for many cultures can also be found in other children’s books from this autumn’s offerings, such as Snowbird Child, mentioned above, which, with its illustrations set in Eastern lands, has a global sensibility. In Aulikki Miettinen’s Otto and the Fairy Baby (Otto ja keijuvauva, WSOY), an old woman, a teddy bear, a kangaroo, and a fairy live together harmoniously in spite of their differences.

Lastly, the pragmatic fairy of Salla and Hannu Savolainen’s Milla and the Bottomless Laundry Basket (Milla ja pohjaton pyykkikori, WSOY) deserves mention. This team’s excellent first collaboration introduces us to an exhausted mother who can’t find a single thing to wear on the first day of daughter’s vacation. So daughter’s personal fairy godmother gives her a gift of a magic bag that produces an endless supply of new clothes – but instead of supplying the clothes closet, the daughter accidentally produces a bottomless laundry basket, and no laundry line in the world could possibly be long enough to accommodate them in their predicament. This is certainly funny for young readers, but equally so for parents accustomed to such responsibility, who will find their nerves soothed in the reading of this educational tale.  As the book says, you shouldn’t let a thing like a mountain of laundry spoil your day. You can use the time to hang out together.

All in all this autumn has brought a dazzling array of colors and apt images of our time – some by means of broad backgrounds, others through a crystallization of fundamental questions and fine and funny images of life. This has been a time of abundance in the quantity of picture books published, as well. In 2006 166 Finnish books for children and 62 for young people were published. In October 2007, the most popular books with illustrations published domestically were Aino Havukainen and Sami Toivonen’s Tatu and Patu’s Finland, Mauri Kunnas’ Tales from Doghill, and the newest book in Sinikka and Tiina Nopola’s popular Risto Rapper series, Risto Rapper and the Last Ice Cream Cone (Risto Räppääjä ja viimeinen tötterö, Tammi). The bestselling picture books last year were The Vikings Are Coming (Vikingit tulevat) and the Doghill books by Mauri Kunnas, the Risto Rapper and Hayhat and Fluffshoe series by Sinikka and Tiina Nopola, the Tatu and Patu series by Aino Havukainen and Sami Toivonen, and the Finlandia Junior winner The Seesaw (Keinulauta), by Timo Parvela and Virpi Talvitie. The number of recent translations of Finnish picture books is also encouraging. In 2006 and 2007, no fewer than 21 translations of Finnish picture books were commissioned under the auspices of FILI printing grants. And more are on their way.

Hannele Jyrkkä
FILI – Finnish Literature Exchange
16.11.2007