Wolf Erlbruch, the illustrator of the children’s book “The little mole who wanted to know who hit his head” is dead.
The description actually sounds like the panacea for a bestseller: a cute creature (mole) has a bad fate (faeces lands on his head). And the subsequent search for the origin of all evil develops into a road trip through the animal kingdom, shot through with an innocent dose of pee poop humor: the book “The little mole who wanted to know who hit his head” has been satisfying since 1989 not just childish curiosity. But also, in the most excellent way, the wish of not a few aunts, friends, godfathers, to bring the pinch of non-conformity that is just allowed under the Christmas tree or on the gift table at children’s birthday parties.
The Little Mole’s Hero’s Journey has sold more than three million copies.
(Photo: Peter Hammer/picture alliance)
The man who staged the mole written by Werner Holzwarth in such a wonderfully anthropomorphic manner died on December 11 in Wuppertal at the age of 74: Wolf Erlbruch, who began his career as a graphic designer in advertising and worked for international magazines and later taught at universities in Düsseldorf, Essen and Wuppertal, illustrated children’s and youth books since 1985. And he soon did so with immense success: he was repeatedly awarded the German Youth Literature Prize and the Hans Christian Andersen Prize (2006) – not only for Mole – and he was the only German to date to receive the “small Nobel Prize”, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.
The little mole almost didn’t embark on his hero’s journey: it wasn’t easy to find a publisher, Erlbruch once said in an interview, “most found the topic yucky”. When a publisher was found, however, he did not have to regret his courage to be a little disreputable: even if a few uncles and aunts reading to them may have turned their noses up, the volume sold more than three million copies and was translated into 27 languages. Some – and the sensitive observer Wolf Erlbruch was one of them – can make gold out of dung themselves.