The “good night program at Königs” looks very similar to that in other families, illustrator Axel Scheffler learned a few years ago at a charity campaign from Prince William himself: Son George loves it when his parents read him “The Gruffalo”. . When Scheffler made a black and white drawing of the Gruffalo on breakfast television a few years later, it was quickly brought to Prince George by courier – to accompany him on his first day of school. “Since tradition is very important to the Royals, I suspect that George’s younger siblings also know the Gruffalo,” says Scheffler with a smile. The bestselling children’s book in rhyme about the fearful monster and the cunning mouse by children’s book author Julia Donaldson and the Hamburg illustrator has sold millions of copies since it was published in 1999 and has been translated into 40 languages.
In the exhibition on Scheffler’s 65th birthday in the International Youth Library, a separate room is dedicated to the warty mythical creature. Gruffalo footsteps show the way there, but when you reach your destination, you also get to know the nightmares that the monster caused its creator. “To this day I can’t explain it to myself, but the character really bothered me, it was a difficult birth,” says Scheffler in advance during a tour. Black and white drawings, which Scheffler used to illustrate his situation at the time, tell of the tenacious act of creation: the monster awaits him on his desk in the morning when he opens the door to his studio, and weighs on him in the evening when he is lying in bed. “If I open my eyes in the morning, Gruffalo is already sitting on me,” he rhymed.
Rhyming witch ride by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler: “There’s still room for dogs and cats”.
(Photo: McMillan)
The collaboration between Donaldson and Scheffler began in 1992 with “My house is too narrow and too small”, the publisher brought them together at the time. To date, this congenial partnership has resulted in 25 titles, including other bestsellers such as “For Dogs and Cats There Is Still Space” to the latest book, “Die Rüpelbande”https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/.”Someone has once calculated that every eleven seconds in the world a book by Julia is bought. Well, yes, and a large part of these books may have been illustrated by me,” says Scheffler, explaining his worldwide success. This also includes the fact that Scheffler, as Britain’s favorite illustrator, was even allowed to design the Christmas stamps for the Royal Mail in 2012.
The Royal Mail stamps are generally very nice, says Scheffler. Much nicer than that of the Deutsche Post. It would also be a shame if their silly label numbers were printed on the imaginatively illustrated envelopes that Scheffler has sent over the past few decades, preferably to his sister Rose in Hamburg, but also to friends like Rotraut Susanne Berner has sent. The imaginative letter pictures are also collected in the IJB under the title “Verbriefte Hoffnung”. “When I went to England 40 years ago to study at the Bath Academy of Art in England, the telephone and letters were the only ways to keep in touch,” explains Scheffler. Faxes came along later, and fortunately the addressees of these illustrated signs of life were farsighted enough to keep them.
Illustrated sign of life: Fax portrait of Axel Scheffler.
(Photo: Axel Scheffler)
Although Scheffler’s pictorial art works are also praised in Germany (loved anyway), picture books and children’s books do not enjoy the same appreciation here as literature for adults in Great Britain. Although they lead to them. One shouldn’t underestimate Scheffler’s characters anyway. At first glance they appear to be cute and colorful. But the radiant radiance is created through a complex technique, through the gradation of countless shades – a creative process that has already been the subject of several short documentaries: First Scheffler gives contours to a pencil draft with ink, then he colors it with watercolors. Then crayons provide the typical Scheffler colourfulness, and finally the pen and ink pen is used again. There is no question – anyone who immerses himself in Scheffler’s world of figures learns to see.
Beautifully twisted coexistence of people, animals and mythical creatures: Axel Scheffler’s imaginative pictorial creations for Frantz Wittkamp’s wondrous quatrains of poetry.
(Photo: Axel Scheffler and Frantz Wittkamp: Went into the woods, caught a lion/2016 Beltz-Gelberg in the Beltz publishing group, Weinheim Basel)
An experience that can now be intensified in the IJB. Scheffler’s subtle and subtle illustrations for the wondrous quatrains by Frantz Wittkamp are also on display there: “Went into the woods. Caught a lion” is the name of both pictures-art-work, which shows a cosmos in which people, animals and mythical creatures are beautifully crooked live together.
Also indispensable in Scheffler’s bestiary is the juggling squirrel, which can be found just above the floor rails in the IJB battlement gallery. “It comes from a book that I was inspired by an English text from 1911 about training squirrels,” says the illustrator. He lent his unmistakably humorous touch to the instructions, which were meant to be serious. Since the text recommended entertainment for the squirrel, it learns from him how to juggle under the astonished eyes of a human family.
Keeps a lot of order, but can only keep it badly himself: Axel Scheffler.
(Photo: Liam Jackson)
Over the decades, a lot has accumulated in his house in the Richmond district of London, says Scheffler. “When Frau Raabe, the head of the youth library, visited me about the planned exhibition in my studio upstairs under the roof, she was probably a little surprised by the abundance of material”. In the meantime, an assistant is helping him to arrange all his material in boxes. “Although I’m very fond of order, I find it difficult to keep it myself,” admits Scheffler. To the chagrin of his partner and his daughter, he doesn’t always manage to draw a line to the house. “It’s so messy,” his 15-year-old daughter exclaims when she comes into the living room, says Scheffler and laughs. Even as a child, she had a soft spot for the loose sheets, for which she coined the expression “in-between images”: Sketches that he created for no reason or any special purpose, in the IJB they also bear witness to Scheffler’s ironic and subtle creative power.
Incidentally, he has just finished working on a new cartoon, says Scheffler. For the eleventh time in a row, this marks the anniversary of a tradition he has come to love: the film will be shown on Christmas Day, at prime television time, shortly before the Christmas speech that King Charles will give for the first time this year. Prince George and his siblings should be happy.
Axel Scheffler – picture worlds for young and old, until March 12, 2023, International Youth Library, Blutenburg Castle; Fri., December 18, scenic-musical reading of “Grüffelo” with musicians from the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, to which Axel Scheffler will draw live