When an author is also an illustrator, or an illustrator also writes stories, and she or he conceives a book that takes shape—then the magic that happens is what you can see in Rajiv Eipe’s Dugga!Dugga is a wordless picture book, or a pure picture storybook. The cover shows the image of a fox-like dog.
Shailaja Shrinivasan & Tultul Biswas: Your writing is prolific—for children, for adults and poetry. How do you keep in touch with the current generation that you write for when you write for children?Hans Sande: Apart from the impulses I get by visiting schools and kindergartens, I have no method or measure to keep in touch with the current generation.
Norwegian poet, novelist, psychiatrist, and illustrator, Hans Sande, pens two cavernous pieces of children’s literature. First, is the powerful, When I Came Home, the Horse was Gone and the unputdownable second, Frog. The texts come to us through NORLA, an initiative to promote the translation of Norwegian books and published by the Indian partner, Eklavya.
A sense of plain bliss pervades every page of the book—right from the beginning—right to the end. Little delights snuggle in nooks and corners of the drawings, and you may repent if you overlooked them when you turned the page in a hurry. You should not. This happy boy, Mattie, draws the sun in the sky (in which can be seen a cricket ball) and turns to grin at the puppy who licks his feet.
There is a country in the Eastern end of what is known as the Mideast in the West. Iran—Persia of history and what we used to call Faaras, has given us wonderful works of cinema, poetry and other forms of art. Who can forget the amazing film ‘Becchha-ye Aasmaan (Children of Heaven)’ by Majid Majidi! Irani imagination stands out as a unique contribution to the repository of aesthetics that the human mind has produced. The same is true of children’s literature.
Grief and loss are never easy to talk about, more so with children. In fact, death and children feel like opposites. Children are full of life, laughter, energy and hope. Death is silent, dark, still and hopeless.Can you write a children’s book about death and not make it dark? In the hands of master storyteller Hans Sande, this is possible.