It is a literary discovery, this bedtime book with the text by William Cole and illustrations by Tomi Ungerer. In 1963 it was published in New York by World Publishing under the title “Frances Face-Maker”. But only now has it come out in German, shortly before Tomi Ungerer would have turned 90. Translated by Anna Cramer-Klett, it is published by Diogenes. It’s about a little girl who, like all children, still comes up with a thousand things in the evening: “It was the same / with the McGee family / and their daughter, little Franzi. / Until one evening / dad thought of something: / Today we play a game new game”. The game is called “Make Faces”.
William Cole: And now you. A bedtime book. With illustrations by Tomi Ungerer. Translated from the English by Anna Cramer-Klett. Diogenes Verlag, 2021. 32 pages, 16 euros.
William Cole’s text inspires Tomi Ungerer to stage the carnival-like interactive game in his typical chalk charcoal strokes. The girl makes the wildest grimaces, grimaces, shudders, acts dignified like a bitch or lies down in bed. With the line “And now you” we are asked to play along from picture to picture. Is this emotional ego trip enough to get you to sleep? The girl’s look at her father gives the answer: “One thing is still missing at the end of the day: Franzi is waiting for her good night kiss.”
This picture book shows how Tomi Ungerer’s mixture of idyll, bizarre and drastic reality also determined his view of children’s literature. He condemned “ideal world stories” and once said that for many years he had not written or drawn for children, “because there are so many titles, one worse and sweeter than the other. There is so much pushy-pussy, fishy-faschi “.
Imitation is desirable when making faces.
The time in which Ungerer illustrated “And now you” fell for him during the difficult phase of life in which he tried to gain a foothold in the USA from 1956 onwards. He didn’t make it to the prudish, conservative society of the time, and with his illustrations, advertising contracts and political campaigns, he was even targeted by the FBI. And when the volumes “The Party” (1969) and “Fornicon” (1971) were published, he had to emigrate to Canada.
On the first page of “And now you” you may see him as a fool with two faces, happy and sad at the same time. He announces his bedtime story – camouflaged under the bell cap.