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Author couple Zipfel and Heinrich: Inspired by their son
Photo: Private
"Literature ends where the answers begin," says Finn-Ole Heinrich.
It is a sentence that most ambitious writers and probably many readers would subscribe to.
But does it also apply to children's books?
"For those in particular," says Heinrich.
"Bosco Rübe races through the year" is the name of the new children's book that Heinrich wrote together with his partner Dita Zipfel.
It is already the third joint work of the two after the picture book hits "Trecker geht mit" and "Schlafen wie die Rüben", both of which were counted among the most beautiful German books of the respective year of publication by the Buchkunst Foundation.
What does normal mean here?
In their new work, Heinrich and Zipfel tell the story of a little person who only wants to eat the cheese from the pizza and dry muesli for breakfast, without milk.
His favorite day is his birthday.
It's just stupid that it's just over - and there's a whole year with normal days ahead of him.
But what does normal mean here?
Bosco is three, there are no normal days, everyday life is an adventure.
Bosco goes on "espitation" with his best friend Jonte, he "wings" as "eagle rooster" to the moon, he gallops through the zoo as a tiger, because Bosco thinks tigers don't run, they gallop.
And once, as a duck, he seems to splash endlessly in a puddle, even when Dad asks him out.
Bosco, on the other hand, only quacks because ducks don't understand human language.
Irrational impulses and Gaga ideas
Heinrich and Zipfel have a son together, who is not called Bosco, but is about as old and as wild and as strong-willed as Bosco.
He inspired many of the read-aloud stories.
Her achievement now consists in reproducing these stories not from the parents' perspective, but from that of the child, including all the irrational impulses and Gaga ideas, the adventurous sentence structure, the funny neologisms.
A fast-paced book that the illustrator Tine Schulz skilfully picks up on.
Not everything in this book is understandable for three-year-olds, but author Heinrich sees no shortcoming in this.
“It's normal for children not to understand a lot.
So that doesn't bother her in stories either."
Bosco loves "climbing brocant", and that's exactly what it says there, again and again, without it ever being dissolved and translated as "Blätterbrikant".
"Why does a subway train have windows?" Bosco once asked without getting an answer.
Yes, why actually?
You can't see anything when you look out, you could hang pictures the size of the windows instead - of dinosaurs, for example.
Enemy image Conni
"The book is an attempt to take children's logic seriously," says Heinrich.
An estimated 80 percent of what is otherwise labeled as children's literature is not literature at all "because it is not free and wild and sincere, because it does not ask and irritate questions, but gives answers".
The children's book series Conni, for example, which his son, to his chagrin, likes very much: "a pedagogical practical text", much too catchy and too understandable, "an instrument to educate and educate".
Conni is not forbidden at Heinrich's house, he wouldn't go that far.
"Our son can decide what he wants to hear." But he doesn't want to write something like Conni himself.
“I don't want to think about children that way, I don't want to educate them, I don't want to shape them.
I want to accompany children as what they are.«
The pleasant side effect: If you don't explain the world to children from above, but talk to them about the world, you have the chance to see more with them than before.
A side effect that also occurs when reading this children's book.
Heinrich's and Zipfel's stories are devoid of great morals.
And all the more full of great feelings.
So big that Bosco bites the table.
Dita Zipfel, Finn-Ole Heinrich: Bosco Rübe races through the year
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Illustrated by Tine Schulz.
Piggyback at Mairisch Verlag;
80 pages;
20 Euros.
From 3 years.
