Interview with Kerstin Schoene, author and illustrator of Monsters aren't real

 

Q: Let us start with the obvious question.  How did you start to illustrate
children's books?

A: I have always had a passion for creativity and drawing, which led me to study Communication Design at university, with an emphasis on Illustration. One of my professors was Wolf Erlbruch, the well-known children`s book illustrator and I owe a lot to him. It was while I was doing my studies that I developed a wish to create a children’s picture book of my own, and so “Monster gibt es nicht…” (Monsters aren’t real) was born. I was lucky to find a publisher almost immediately, and since then, I have decided to dedicate myself to illustrating children’s books.

Q: How is doing this kind of work different from your other illustration
work? Are there things you feel you need to keep in mind when you illustrate children's books?

A: All my drawings are intended to be beautiful but also captivating.
I want the illustrations in my children’s books to ‘live’ and to communicate a happy feeling not only to kids but also to grownups. Humor seemed to be the best way to do so. I also relish incorporating exciting details that are waiting to be discovered.

Q: Monsters aren't real is the first book completely written and illustrated by you and it is clear that you are quite attached to your monster.  How did you create this character? Did it begin with an idea, a visual?

A: When I started to think about creating a children’s picture book, I quickly had the idea of making the main character a monster. You are absolutely free in the creation of a monster- there are no rules you have to follow or any particular anatomy you have to stick to. I could creatively ‘rave’.  I created a number of different characters: tall, small, fat, thin, with horn, without a nose, with teeth or dotted… the choice was almost endless. But it was only the character you see in the final version that I felt fit in with the story which I was developing simultaneously at the time.  While I was working on the book, my monster was constantly in my mind, and I took him everywhere.  Together, we went to bed, and together we woke up in the morning.  At my graduation, I was "the one with the monster".

Q: Why did you decide to make your monster face the dilemma that he does, which has been described by one reviewer as 'an existential crisis'?

A: Oh yes the “existential crisis” – Once I decided that a monster would be the main character, I started to think about the plot of the story. Many stories start with a problem that needs to be solved. We all have problems, why shouldn’t a monster also have a problem, but what problem could it be? For sure, a monster wouldn’t be too concerned about how much it weighs, whether it stinks or not, its hairstyle, or the price of gasoline… Ultimately, a monster does not exist and that exactly must be its problem.

Q: How do you feel about the existence of an Arabic monster?

A: I am very happy. Of course I love my monster, and I am happy every time it learns a new language. At the moment, he speaks German, Danish, English and French.  When I tell people about the Arabic monster, they raise their eyebrows in disbelief. I am really looking forward to seeing the Arabic copy. Not being able to read or understand the language, I like the beautifully curved characters.

Q: Are you working on anything new?

A: Currently, a new book-project is in its final stages.  It is the second book fully created (written and illustrated) by me. This time, the main character is a small penguin, so now it is the penguin who is going
to bed with me in the evening and getting up with me in the morning.

Q: Do you conduct activities with children around this book? What are their reactions to the book and the monster?

A: After the book was published, I did some activities with children and we had a kind of “picture book cinema” in which the kids could take part actively.  During the activity, I would let a small monster sign appear at appropriate scenes. For the kids, this was their cue to shout at the top of their voices: “There are monsters!” In this way, they were supporting the poor monster. They really were enjoying themselves, and most importantly, they were not afraid of the monster but loved it immediately.

Q: As you were preparing this book, how did you make the choice about the role of the text and illustrations in the construction of this story?
Would you have been prepared to dispense with the text entirely if you
could have done so?

This book was created in the framework of an illustration course I was taking, so the drawings were the main part. The story line was carried mainly by the images and especially by the emotional and facial expressions of the monster. The text was an accompanying support, but one I would not want to have left out entirely.

Kerstin Schoene studied communication design at the University of Wuppertal - with an emphasis on Illustration. She likes to draw using pencil, chalk, and watercolor, but currently, her best friend is the graphics tablet. The monster in Monsters aren’t real was completely digitally created. Since her graduation, she has been working as a freelance illustrator and graphic designer. She has collaborated with several publishers, and she writes and illustrates her own children's books. She lives in Haan, Germany, under the observation of a little ball of fur.

Monsters aren't real by Kerstin Schoene

While this blog will mainly be about Arabic non-translated children’s book, I will be making an exception this time (and maybe at other times in the future, who knows?).

This month, I will review Monsters aren’t real, written and illustrated by Kerstin Schoene  from Germany.  The original German version was published by BajazzoVerlag in Zurich, Switzerland, and the story was later translated into Arabic and published by Asala Publishers in Beirut, Lebanon with support from the Spotlight on Rights programme.  There is also an English version available from Kane/Miller publishers.

The story begins like this:

This causes our monster to start to doubt his own existence, so he sets out to convince the world that monsters are actually real, contrary to what everyone else seems to think. 

He starts a bit of a visibility campaign:

and performs many feats of strength such as this one:

 

All this to no avail: nobody pays him any mind, and he fails to scare anybody, even the youngest children. 

Toward the end of the story, our monster gets discouraged, so he decides to give up and acknowledge that everyone else was right. He starts to repeat to himself, "Monsters aren’t real". While he is doing so, another monster appears out of nowhere to object to this statement. The monsters, happy to find each other, set out together to convince the world that monsters do actually exist:

I have a reason for using so many illustrations* in this summary.  Monsters aren’t real is a story told primarily through its illustrations with a scant but judicious use of the written text.  As a result, I wanted to stay true to the spirit of the book - it wouldn’t have felt right otherwise.

The illustrations play a leading role in narrating the events of the story; in fact, it is only through the illustrations that we find out what originally triggers the monster to set out on his quest (a graffiti on the wall denying the existence of monsters) and the different things he does to try to convince people that monsters do exist.

Schoene uses text sparsely, mostly for conveying dialogue, both the internal dialogue of the monster and his conversation with the monster that appears at the end of the story. Out of forty pages, the book contains ten spreads or twenty pages that contain no text but only images- I have used a few of these images above.  Schoene does not go as far as making this a wordless book- a wise decision as I don’t think that this book would have worked quite as well without Schoene’s carefully used text which carries conveys a lot of humour and serves to drive the story forward.

It is for this reason that this book is very interesting to me, as it highlights the role of the illustrator as co-writer and the importance of involving illustrators in the construction of a picture book story. When we read picture books, we often count on the illustrations as our primary source for a lot of information, such as the physical appearance of the characters, their social milieu and their physical environment. 

The larger-than-usual role played by the illustrations in this story is very easily explained by the fact that the author is herself the illustrator. Usually, illustrators enter the process of producing a picture book at a second stage after the text has been written and edited.  Any illustrator wishing to be creative or leave his/her distinctive mark has to be so in the empty spaces left for them (whether deliberately or not) by the author.

However, I would like to think that a book like this would not otherwise have been impossible (i.e. in cases where the author and the illustrator are different people) if the author and the illustrator work collaboratively instead of separately, or if the illustrator ‘gets’ the text and is allowed the space to roam free to express himself/herself and his/her style and philosophy.

I have another reason to show so many illustrations, and that is to give you a taster of the skillful illustrations in this very funny book. Once we see the illustrations, it comes as no surprise to us that the monster is not really able to scare anyone, and Schoene portrays people’s indifference to the monster to great comic effect. On the more technical level, the illustrator uses soft and broken colours in her images with a predominance of soft browns, beige and green, and her backgrounds are clear and uncluttered. To the credit of the publisher of the Arabic version of the book, the book has that nice smell of good quality and thick paper, and the end result is an attractive book.

You might ask yourself about the message of a story, which basically says that, contrary to what your parents tell you, monsters do exist.  Well, where else would fantastic creatures live and unexpected things happen apart from a book such as this? God knows, these things don’t happen enough in real life.

When I recall the stories that I, and many other children, used to love as a child, they were stories full of pixies, fairies, giants, witches, flying objects and portals to another world that existed where we least expected them.  I think the reason that I loved these stories was the boredom I felt as a child in my daily life.  These books were a comfort and held out hope that somewhere there was a world more beautiful and exciting.

In addition, believe it or not, Monsters aren’t real is full of some very astute social observations, such as, that sometimes the majority can believe something very strongly (such as monsters not being real) but it can be wrong and still somehow have the power to make you believe that you are the one who is wrong. The book also contains positive messages about not giving up when you are fighting for what you know is true and the relief one feels to finally find like-minded friends and accomplices.

Maybe, you didn’t get any of that.  At least Monsters aren’t real is a very enjoyable story and a skillfully executed book, and that alone makes it worth reading.

*The illustrations used are taken from the Arabic version of the book; they are reproduced with the kind permission of Asala Publishers.