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.

Interview with Ahlam Bisharat

When I contacted Ahlam Bisharat, the author of My Nom de Guerre is Butterfly, to ask her to answer some questions about her career as a writer and My Nom de Guerre is Butterfly, she referred me to an interview she had given to Tayf magazine, a magazine about Palestinian children’s literature published twice a year by the Resource Centre of Tamer Institute for Community Education in Ramallah, Palestine. 

In the fifteenth edition of Tayf magazine, there was a special dossier dedicated to My Nom de Guerre is Butterfly, which included an interview with Bisharat, press articles about the banning of the novel in Tobas, and opinion pieces about the book.  The rest of the issue included articles about other topics of relevance to children’s books in Palestine.

I have reproduced below a section of this rich interview, with the kind permission of Tamer Institute.  The interview was available originally in Arabic, and I have translated the excerpts below into English.  If you are interested to read the entire interview in Arabic or get a digital copy of this edition of Tayf magazine, please contact me at: ska00ster@gmail.com  

Q: Ahlam Bisharat, you are a Palestinian writer and storyteller.  How did you start writing for children? What was the beginning?

A: A few days before, I ran into Foufou as she was walking in the street in the morning.  She had her hair tied in pretty little pigtails, and she was carrying a piece of paper in her hand.  In the beginning, I thought that she had written on the paper a question to ask her classmates in kindergarten as her brother Majd does. Every day, Majd would write a question on a piece of paper to ask his classmates as they were lining up to go to class in the morning.  Foufou’s paper, on the other hand, did not contain a question.  She handed me the paper with full confidence, as if the writing on the paper said, “Foufou is the princess of the kindergarten.” Instead, I read there, “There is a little girl who hits Foufou every day, so Foufou cries every morning and says, ‘I don’t want to go to school.’”

Out of curiosity, I asked Foufou, “Who is this girl?”

She answered proudly, “Batoul.”

This is how I got into this very seductive predicament (of writing for children) as I would have conversations of this kind every morning with Foufou.

Q: Writing for young people, with all the challenges involved, is a bit of an adventure, in my opinion, especially in a Palestinian society which has yet to provide this age group with the necessary attention, whether socially or in literature.  Given this reality, how did Ismi Al-Haraki Farasha, your first novel, get to see the light of day?

A: The world of children and adolescents is overwhelming - it is full of questions, movement and adventure.  Due to the way we raise children in Palestinian society and the Arab world, this world has been submerged inside a shell.  It is not easy to penetrate this shell, especially as it has its guardians who use education, socialization, guardianship and the need to hold on to religion, societal values, norms and traditions as pretexts to prevent any hand from reaching out and simply touching this shell.  We need to completely transform our way of dealing with these traditional notions, so that we may get close enough, both socially and when we write for children, to speak directly to the pearl that is concealed within this shell without being accused of trying to distort, harm or maybe steal this pearl for personal reasons.

In such a reality, the birth of my butterfly was far from easy, and I became aware of how difficult it was during the birthing of this butterfly, which was similar to a process of labour and during which the wings of the butterfly would beat against the walls of its cocoon and make a loud noise.  Its wings were weak at the beginning, and then they became more solid.  I observed this transformation, and I made it happen because I fell in love with the creature that was hidden within this cocoon.

Q: Why did your heroine choose to hide her questions in a bag instead of sharing them with others? Does this have anything to do with the lack of confidence that young people have in other people at this stage of their lives? Or is it related to the fact that these are questions posed by an adolescent girl and that either these questions have no real answers or that these questions will not be considered acceptable in a Palestinian society that has girls under siege?

A: The heroine of Ismi Al-Haraki Farasha is an intelligent and adventurous girl, and she hides her questions because she feels that somehow they belong to her special world, especially as she does not find any convincing answers or people available to answer her questions.  The butterfly wanted to take refuge in this process of searching for and discovering questions, especially since the mission of discovering a question is more dangerous and inspiring than the act of finding an answer for it.  Answers create limits, while questions open up horizons of expectations.  At this age in particular, the space of expectation is the only real place because it is a space of dreams and wishes that we as adult wish to regain but fail to do so.  So we go back to search for the children inside of us, so that they may help us in this quest.

Q: In your novel, there is a focus on the heroine’s relationship with her father who works in an Israeli settlement, and this relationship causes the girl to voice certain questions.  This is a situation that raises many questions in our society which rejects these settlements and considers their presence illegal and illegitimate. In your opinion, what is the role of your young adult novel in clarifying or justifying this thorny relationship between people’s rejection of these settlements and their (economic) need to work there? Did you introduce this element on purpose in order to reach a particular conclusion or communicate a particular message?

A: The butterfly and I share a question that might seem a bit naïve: “How can we be liberated from this occupation if we are shackled by the bonds of economic dependency?” Every day, we are deprived by the occupiers of a span of land*and a wish, but what I most afraid will be stolen from us is our wish to be free of this occupation.  And this is what is happening at the moment. The occupation is letting us forget what we really want, and it is transforming us into creatures that live in a new reality that does not provoke any anger.  As a writer, I have the responsibility to expose this great social deception that we are going towards, like lambs going to the slaughter as if they were merely going on an unpleasant trip.  We have chanted many slogans and have raised many calls: No to Israeli products, No to working for the occupier, No to the Judaization of Jerusalem, No, No and No.  We repeat all these no’s, but things go on as before, as if we have memorized these no’s by heart to the point where the heart no longer understands what our tongues are saying.  You might ask, “But what have you done about this?” What I wanted to do is to regain this path that connects the heart to the tongue, or perhaps to liberate this space, the space of the heart.  I want to take back this desire to be free and grant it to the coming generation, upon whom I insist on betting.  

(*shibr in Arabic, a distance measured by a human hand from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the little finger)

Ahlam Bisharat is a Palestinian writer and storyteller born in Tammoon village, Jenin in 1975. She holds a Master’s degree in Arabic Literature from the Faculty of Arts at An-Najah National University in Nablus. She began as a short story writer and won several awards for her work in this field.  She has also published three picture books for children as well as the young adult novel, Ismi Al-Haraki Farasha (My Nom de Guerre is Butterfly). She is the recipient of several awards, including the Al-Awda Award for children’s literature given by the Badil Resource Centre for Palestinian Residency and Refuge for the picture book Shubbak Al-Zinko (The Corrugated Iron Window). Ismi Al-Haraki Farasha was included in the IBBY Honor List for 2012, a biennial selection of outstanding, recently published books from more than seventy countries.

مقابلة مع أحلام بشارات

عندما قمت بالإتصال بأحلام بشارات، مؤلفة إسمي الحركي فراشة، لأطلب منها أن تجيب عن بعض الأسئلة المتعلقة بعملها ككاتبة وبروايتها إسمي الحركي فراشة، نصحتني أن أقوم بإعادة نشر مقابلة كانت قد أجريت معها في مجلة طيف، وهي مجلة معنية بأدب الأطفال الفلسطيني تصدر مرتين في السنة عن مركز الموارد الخاص بمؤسسة تامر للتعليم المجتمعي في رام الله فلسطين. وتضمن العدد الخامس العشر الذي نشر في العام 2010 ملف كامل حول رواية إسمي الحركي فراشة، فيه مقابلة مع أحلام بشارات، مقالات عن الرواية  وتغطية لحادثة منع الرواية في طوباس كما تضمن مقالات اخرى تتناول مواضيع متنوعة ذات صلة بأدب الأطفال، وهي جديرة بالقراءة.

لقد قمت بإختيار بعض المقاطع من هذه المقابلة الغنية، بإذن من مؤسسة تامر التي تكرمت بالسماح لي بأن أنشر هذه المقتطفات. لو كنتم ترغبون بقراءة المقابلة بالكامل والإطلاع على هذا العدد من مجلة الطيف، يمكنكم الإتصال بي على بريدي الإلكتروني الخاص: ska00ster@gmail.com

أحلام بشارات، الكاتبة والقاصة الفلسطينية، كيف كان إنتقالك الى الكتابة في أدب الأطفال؟ وما هي البداية؟

قبل أيام إلتقيت فوفو في الطريق صباحاً، كانت تربط قرنين جميلين وتحمل في يدها ورقة. ظننت في البداية أنها كتبت سؤالا في الورقة ستسأله لرفاقها في الروضة مثلما يفعل أخوها مجد، فمجد كل يوم يكتب سؤالا على ورقة ويسأله لرفاقه في الطابور الصباحي. لم تكن ورقة فوفو تحمل سؤالاً إذاً، بل تقول الورقة التي أعطتني إياها بكل ثقة وكأنه قد كتب فيها "فوفو أميرة الروضة": "هناك واحدة تضرب فوفو كل يوم، وفوفو تبكي كل صباح وتقول لا أريد أن أذهب الى الروضة".

سألت فوفو من باب الفضول، "من هي يا فوفو؟"

ردت فوفو بفخر: "بتول"

هكذا تورطت في تلك الورطة المغرية، عندما صرت أتحدث مع فوفو كل صباح أحاديث من هذا النوع..

أدب الفتيان وتحدياته مغامرة كبرى في إعتقادي، خصوصاً في مجتمع فلسطيني لم يؤمن بعد بهذه الفئة ولم يوليها حتى الآن الإهتمام اللازم أدبيا وإجتماعياً، كيف ولدت روايتك الأولى "إسمي الحركي فراشة" في واقع مشابه؟

عالم الفتيان والأطفال عالم غامر، متخم بالأسئلة والحركة والمغامرة، وطبيعة التربية في مجتمعنا الفلسطيني والعربي ككل جعلت هذا العالم مغموراً داخل صدفة، لذا بالفعل فإن إختراق هذه الصدفة ليس سهلاً، سيما وأن هناك حماة لتلك الصدفة يتخدون من التربية والوصاية والتشبث بالدين والقيم وتقاليد المجتمع ذرائع كي يمنعوا أي يد تمتد لتلمسها مجرد لمس. نحتاج لتحول في التعاطي مع المفاهيم السابقة كي نقترب أدبياً وإجتماعياً لمخاطبة اللؤلؤة المخبأة هناك دون أن نتهم بأن غرضنا هو الإساءة إليها أو تشويهها، وربما سرقتها لأغراض شخصية.

لم تكن ولادة الفراشة سهلة في مثل هذا الواقع، وقد وعيت تلك الصعوبة أثناء ولادتها التي كانت شبيهة بمخاض، خلاله كان جناحا الفراشة يرتطمان بالجدران ويصدران صوتاً صاخباً. كانا ضعيفين في البداية ثم صارا صلبين. لقد راقبت ذلك التحول وصنعته، لأني أغرمت بالفعل بذلك الكائن المختبىىء هناك.

لماذا إختارت البطلة في روايتك أن تحتفظ بأسئلتها في محفظة ولم تشارك بها احدا؟ هل لهذا علاقة ربما بعدم الثقة بالأخرين في هذه المرحلة العمرية؟ أم له علاقة بأسئلة الفتيات تحديداً في هذه المرحلة والتي إما قد لا تجد الإجابة المناسبة، أم ان أسئلة هذه الفتاة قد لا تلقى قبولاً أصلاً في مجتمع فلسطيني يحاصر الفتيات؟

بطلة الفراشة فتاة ذكية ومغامرة، وقد خبأت تلك الأسئلة لأنها ظنت بطريقة ما أنها عالمها، سيما وهي لا تجد إجابات مقنعة ولا مجيبين حاضرين، أرادت الفراشة أن تحتمي خلف إكتشاف الأسئلة على إعتبار أن مهمة إكتشاف السؤال أخطر وأكثر إلهاماً من فعل الإجابة عليه، فالإجابة تصنع حداً، بينما السؤال يفتح أفقاً للتوقع. وفي هذا العمر تحديداً تكون مساحة التوقع هي المكان الحقيقي لأنها مساحة الأحلام والأماني التي نتمنى نحن الكبار إستعادتها ونفشل، فنرجع للبحث عن الطفل فينا كي يساعدنا في تلك المهمة.

في روايتك حديث عن علاقة الفتاة البطلة بوالدها الذي يعمل في مستوطنة، وهذه العلاقة كانت لها أسئلتها الخاصة بها لدى بطلتنا، وهي حالة تثير تساؤلات عديدة في مجتمعنا الذي يرفض هذه المستوطنات ويعتبر وجودها غير شرعي، ما هو برأيك دور هذه الرواية الموجهة للفتيان في توضيح أو تبرير العلاقة الشائكة بين رفض المستوطنات والعمل فيها؟ وهل كان استحضار هذه الشخصية متعمداً للوصول في النهاية الى نتيجة معينة؟

أتشارك مع الفراشة هذا السؤال الذي قد يبدو ساذجاً: "كيف سنتحرر من الأحتلال وهو يكبلنا بقيود التبعية الإقتصادية؟" الإحتلال يسرق منا كل يوم شبراً وأمنية. وأكثر ما أخشاه أن يسرق منا رغبتنا في التحرر منه. وهذا ما يحصل بالفعل حاليا. إنه ينسينا ما نريد، ويحولنا الى أحياء بواقع جديد غير مغضوب عليه. أنا ككاتبة لدي مسؤولية أن أفضح خديعتنا الإجتماعية الذاهبين في طريقها مثل خروف ماض الى ذبحه وكأنه ذاهب في نزهة غير جميلة. لقد رفعنا شعارات كثيرة: لا للبضائع الإسرائيلية، لا للعمل عند الإحتلال، لا لتهويد القدس، ولا ولا ولا. نكرر اللاءات والأمور تمشي وكأننا حفظنا اللاءات عن ظهر قلب الى حد أن القلب لم يعد يفهم ما الذي يردده اللسان، "وما فعلته أنت" قد تسألين: ما أردته هو إستعادة الطريق الواصلة بين اللسان والقلب، أريد تحرير تلك المساحة، مساحة القلب. أريد أن أسترد تلك الرغبة في التحرر وأهبها للجيل القادم الذي أصر أن أراهن عليه.

أحلام بشارات، كاتبة وقاصة فلسطينية ولدت العام 1975 في قرية طمون في جنين. حازت على شهادة ماجستير في الأدب العربي من كلية الآداب في جامعة النجاح الوطنية في نابلس وبدأت رحلتها في عالم الأدب والكتابة ككاتبة قصص قصيرة ففازت بجوائز عديدة في هذا المجال. وقد قامت بنشر ثلاث قصص للاطفال ورواية لليافعين هي إسمي الحركي فراشة.  من أبرز الجوائز التي حازت عليها في مجال الكتابة للأطفال جائزة العودة لأدب الأطفال في العام 2008 عن قصتها "شباك الزينكو" وهذه الجائزة يعطيها المركز الفلسطيني لمصادر حقوق المواطنة واللاجئين كما أن رواية إسمي الحركي فراشة وضعت ضمن قائمة الشرف للمجلس الدولي لكتب اليافعين للعام 2012، و هي قائمة تصدر كل سنتين وتتضمن نخبة من الكتب المميزة والصادرة حديثاً من أكثر من سبعين دولة في العالم.