The child’s gift of turning everyday things into adventure ensures that the stuffed Java tiger enters the school class.
Deef, the narrator in Joke van Leeuwen’s new book, has the gift of turning everyday things into adventure. When he was giving a lecture at school about the extinct Java tiger, the door opened and a friendly Java tiger came in: “I recognized him immediately. He came to me and sat down next to me. He did nothing to me. There is nothing more you can do when you are extinct. ” Then the tiger thanks Deef, because “maybe I don’t exist anymore, but if you talk about me and think of me, I actually already exist.”
“How did I get out of new words if others didn’t know them?
With his stories, Deef not only brings tigers back to life. Rather, with his 15 “When I mal-” stories he shows that even the most inconspicuous everyday occurrence can be a lucky bag: A bus ride leads into the jungle, a drawn male comes to life, and the queen stands when jumping off the three-meter board at the edge of the pool and cheers on Deef. Each of Deef’s stories is only a few pages long – and opens up a whole cosmos. Deef is an imaginative mind, a dreamer and a thinker, curious and stubborn. By putting on a hat he is “someone else. That’s how I walked around the house. I was an explorer. Explorers never knew exactly where they were or what was normal there.” In Deef’s unbiased view of the world, childlike worldview is paired with childlike wisdom – and questions of linguistic philosophy are also negotiated: “What did I get from new words if others didn’t know them? I could just as easily say:” I’m looking for a thing for what-is-that-called-even if you-know-how-you-feel. “
The Dutch artist’s books are always about the whole: Joke van Leeuwen creates total works of art from text, typography and black and white drawings. Here she stacks, with her characteristic, only superficially awkward stroke, just as deeply as she does with her sentences. She just puts them into the world: They seem unpretentious, almost harmless, but then a subtle joke is revealed and you are enchanted by their poetry and profundity – and sometimes also stirred up by seriousness or melancholy. She never ignites a big firework of effects, instead she delights her readers in “Als ich mal” with Deef’s feeling for the small, big things and encourages them to do the same: take a look for a different view of the world and perhaps also behind it to catch in order to discover, to dream and to tell about it. (from 6 years) [AUTOR_ENDE]Ines Galling
Joke van Leeuwen: When I did. From the Dutch by Hanni Ehlers. Gerstenberg Verlag, 2021. 95 pages, 13.00 euros.