How Simple Stories Become Great Books
Konrad Heidkamp explains why Wolf Erlbruch is one of Germany's best-loved illustrators.

Anyone who has anything to do with picture books will know the problem: either adults like them, or children like them, but seldom both. Wolf Erlbruch is one of the few illustrators to succeed in satisfying the big readers while keeping the little ones entertained. People like to say that children should be taken seriously, that it's important to address them 'eye to eye'. But isn't that what everyone's aiming at? It's surely not for lack of trying that they fail. When German publishers Peter Hammer Verlag asked Wolf Erlbruch to illustrate a story by the Ghanaian writer James Aggrey, Erlbruch drew his pictures the way he thought people expected picture books to look. Until then he'd had a successful career in advertising, illustrating for Playboy, Esquire and the German weekly Stern. He knew exactly how to satisfy people's expectations. The resulting picture book, Der Adler, der nicht fliegen wollte (published in English by Little Tiger Press as The Eagle That Would Not Fly), demonstrates as much: the illustrations are light and insubstantial. There's no evidence of Erlbruch as we know him. Twenty years on and there are a number of ingredients that we've come to associate with Erlbruch: the squared maths-book-style paper, the green kitchen-wall-like paper, the topographical maps, the rubber stamps, the animals cut out of picture encyclopaedias. The material is used so sparingly that there's space and time to see, to take in both content and substance. These are much-loved Erlbruch recipes that have been served up many times. Looking back, you can see the development in Erlbruch's work. If you flick through the book that he illustrated in 1989, after a long pause from book-illustrating, you can already identify it as an 'Erlbruch'. The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew It Was None of His Business is the English title of Werner Holzwarth's story, originally published in German by Peter Hammer Verlag. One morning the little mole wakes up to find someone has 'done its business' on his head. He wanders reproachfully through the pictures, investigating the waste products of all the likely suspects. The mole carries the offending article on his head like a turban: he's a caricature, but - like the artwork of Norwegian caricaturist Gulbransson - drawn lovingly and with individuality. This is due in part to the figures -- felt-tip-coloured cut-outs that move across pale backgrounds like actors on a stage. They're as much a part of Erlbruch's style as the sudden appearance of a realistic-looking cow in amidst the other quirky characters. With the publication of Erlbruch's second picture book of 1990, Die fürchterlichen Fünf ('The Terrible Five') - the story of five social outcasts who win back their street cred by hanging out together at the beach - a number of new components were added to Erlbruch's personal mythology: the ever-present moon that illuminates his dusky drawings, his love of offbeat music, his attention to typography, and the careful design of the end-papers. Moreover it's the first book actually written by Erlbruch himself. It's this that lends the story its particular humour and that makes it ring so true. Erlbruch's next book, published the following year, is just as witty and convincing. Leonard is the title of the book and the name of a little boy with a phobia about dogs. The character was modelled on Erlbruch's own son, Leo. In fact there were real-life counterparts for all the rest of the family, including Leonard's grandmother, who crawls around with a bone in her mouth. The point of the exercise? To take away Leonard's fear of dogs. The end-pages were painted by the real Leo. Wolf Erlbruch commented at the time: 'Leo kept drawing scary-looking dogs until he wasn't afraid of them any more.' That's one function of art. The 1995 continuation of the family saga, Frau Meier, die Amsel (published in English by Orchard Books, NY as Mrs Meier the Bird) displays the same simple brilliance. Everything is present in equal measure -- biographical background, the details of the artwork, the reference to art history and, most important of all, the story. This is where my favourite book, the picture book Nachts ('At Night'), comes in. In Nachts the very essence of every good illustration - the way in which the world of text is mirrored and transformed in pictures - becomes the theme and guiding principle of the book. It's the middle of the night and little Fons can't sleep, so he wakes his father and they walk together through the pitch-black city. And while the most amazing things are happening all around them, the father walks hand in hand with his son, dragging his feet, his eyes barely open, insisting that everyone's sleeping and that there's nothing to see. He doesn't notice that there's a fish pushing a strawberry in a pram, that the bridge is in fact the back of a dog, that a gorilla has lent his son a helping hand -- he sees nothing at all! At the end of the book the father is tucked back up in bed, and, of course, there's nothing going on at night: 'It's just dark.' This wonderful little book could be read as an extended comment on the difference between children and adults. And that's one of Erlbruch's greatest strengths: he paints the child into the adult world and the adult into the world of children. The two worlds exist alongside one another, and neither has priority over the other. Children and adults smile across at each other with tenderness, affection and perhaps a little irritation. And that's absolutely not the same as seeing 'eye-to-eye'. For that, the adult would have to carry the child - which is ultimately too tiring - or stoop down towards it and risk straining his back. And that's why it's so much better for adults and children to stand up straight and speak for themselves, father and son, or - as in Erlbruch's latest picture book, Am Anfang ('In the Beginning') - God and man. That way everybody's happy and nobody loses out. Of course, there are also all the other books that Erlbruch has illustrated: his pictures for Gioconda Belli's Die Werkstatt der Schmetterlinge, his version of Goethe's Das Hexeneinmaleins and his superb edition of Karl Philipp Moritz's Neues ABC-Buch. These illustrations are worthy of a gallery wall - for art-lovers they're a delight. And yet it's the other books I find most moving. No fantasy adventures, no social problems and no heroes - just simple, quiet stories. About not being able to sleep at night, about grandpa dying, about wanting to have someone to hug, about taking care of the bird that can't fly. Or about getting up every day and having to create a bit more world. Just simple stories that become great books. Konrad Heidkamp is children's books editor of Die Zeit. He is also a well-known music critic and author of It's all over now (Alexander Fest Verlag, 1999), a history of jazz and rock in postwar Germany, and Sophisticated Ladies (Rowohlt, 2003), a survey of twentieth-century women icons. Wolf Erlbruch's books have been translated into many languages, but few so far have appeared in English. Only The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew It Was None of His Business (Chrysalis Children's Books) is currently in print in the UK. Rights to Am Anfang, his most recent picture book (text by Bart Moyaert, illustrations by Wolf Erlbruch), are available from Peter Hammer Verlag (info@peter-hammer-verlag.de). Translated by Sally-Ann Spencer