Between Fiction and Reality: Maps and Cartographic Logic in the Works of Peter Sís

Abstract

This article examines the use of maps in the works of Czech author- illustrator Peter Sis in order to consider the role that cartography plays in the construction of four of his biographical picturebooks: Follow the Dream: The Story of Christopher Columbus (2003/1991), Starry Messenger: Galileo Galilei (1996), The Tree of Life: A Book Depicting the Life of Charles Darwin, Naturalist, Geologist and Thinker (2003), and The Pilot and the Little Prince: The Life of Antoine de Saint-Exupery (2013). The profusion of maps found in Sis’s biographical picturebooks expresses an understanding that the exploration of identity is intimately linked with the exploration of the spaces in which that identity is formed. The maps represent three basic functions for Sis: first, he uses maps to situate the reader in a specific time and place; second, maps are elements that initiate adventure; and third, the profusion of maps, combined with other textual elements, raises a question that runs through all of Sis’s work regarding the limits of representations of reality. The article illustrates the three functions by presenting a walk through the pages of the four chosen picturebooks, describing and analysing the different types of maps that Sis uses.