The Latest Picture Books
Relating the Whole World in Pictures

A canary that travels all the way to New York, an illustrated piece of German history, a rollicking alphabet, sailors’ yarns, and an adventure around a home office: Picture books can be as rich and colourful as life itself.

By Holger Moos

In the nineteenth century, a canary breed from the Harz Mountains called the Harz Roller became world famous. The birds had a strikingly beautiful song. Their ancestors came to Europe from Madeira and the Azores. Since canaries react very quickly to a lack of oxygen, they were taken into the Harz mines. At that time, quite a few miners significantly augmented their income by breeding Harz Rollers. Hundreds of thousands of these birds were exported to South Africa, South America, Australia, and especially the USA. The picture book 189 by Dieter Böge and Elsa Klever tells the story of a canary that journeyed together with 188 members of the same species to the New World, to New York, “where he experiences another big surprise. Between the wonderfully muted colours of the forest and the landscape, the canary’s yellow shines brightly, one of 189” (Deutschlandfunk – The Month’s 7 Best, May 2020).

a house over time and a kobold

The illustrator Britta Teckentrup transformed a very personal non-fiction book by Thomas Harding into a picture book. Sommerhaus am See (The House by the Lake) tells the story of a house on the outskirts of Berlin. Thomas Harding’s great-grandparents built this house on Groß Glienicke Lake. In 1936 the Jewish family had to flee from the Nazis. After that, a member of the Nazi party and his family lived in the house, then a couple who had fled Berlin during the bombings, and finally a Stasi informant. In 1961 the GDR built the Berlin Wall across the property. Over and over again, the house stood empty. “Until one day the author of this book sees that the house needs help. Together with local people, he gets to work. One house, four families, and 100 years of German history” (Deutschlandfunk – The Month’s 7 Best, April 2020).
 
Plenty of sailors’ yarns are spun in Louise Heymans’s Ein Seemann namens Ozean (Captain Ocean). Jonas finds a tiny sailor in the basement who introduces himself as Captain Ocean. The captain tells the boy stories from his life and the two quickly become friends. Jonas himself is new to the city and has not yet met many people. Thanks to the tiny ship’s kobold, he makes friends with two children from the neighbourhood and together they go on a long journey that is captured in a poetic picture book about the evolution of friendship. “His plot and characters are unusual, the language is atmospherically dense, and the illustrations are emotionally moving. All of this creates a picture book that is profound and ambitious” (janetts-meinung.de).

stressed parents, playful letters

In Seepferdchen sind ausverkauft (Seahorses are Sold Out), Constanze Spengler and Katja Gehrmann recount what can happen when overworked parents don’t pay attention. Mika is on holiday, his dad is home, but has to sit at the computer and work so there’ll be no excursion to the quarry lake. But Mika is allowed to take dad’s wallet to a pet shop and choose a pet. A wild and amusing story ensues as different animals go in and out of Mika’s house without his stressed dad noticing a thing. “Picture books can also make fun of adults and just turn them into jokes. Here, it’s done in a way that’s very sweet and yet so logical that you’re happy about every new animal acquisition and every consequential development that Mika sets in motion” (titel-kulturmagazin.net).
 
Das ausgelassene ABC (The Rollicking ABC) by Ina Hattenhauer is a uniquely original and funny book. The plays on words start with the title. Ausgelassen means both “playful” and “omitted” and the picture book is and does both. For example, when it loses an A, the pigeon (Taube) squeezes a tube. It’s no surprise that this book was nominated for the 2020 German Youth Literature Prize in the picture book category. The jury was also amused, as their statement explains, “This picture book encourages readers to listen up, take a closer look, and read aloud. Reading it together will certainly be as much fun for young discoverers of the alphabet as for older bookworms. Ina Hattenhauer’s cartoon-like scenes underline the witty puns in this stimulating ABC picture book.”