Bilder Zu "Klassikern." ed. by Ute Dettmar et al.

Abstract

Reviewed by: Bilder Zu "Klassikern." ed. by Ute Dettmar et al. Ines Galling Translated by Nikola von Merveldt BILDER ZU "KLASSIKERN." Edited by Ute Dettmar, Claudia Maria Pecher, and Martin Anker. Schneider Verlag Hohengehren, 2019, 308 pages. ISBN: 978-3-8340-1964-6 In the winter term 2016-17, a lecture series on "Images on 'Classics" was held at the Frankfurt University Institute for Juvenile Book Research. This volume is a collection of the lectures given there. At their core, they all explore the significance of images in international classics of children's and young adult literature. What makes a work a "classic" notwithstanding changing aesthetic and real-world contexts? What role do images and the text-image rela tionship play? The individual analyses address these ques tions using vivid examples. Works from different histor ical periods that have become "classics" are examined in detail, such as Pinocchio and Alice in Wonderland, as well as Walter Trier's Kästner illustra tions and those of Paul Maar and Janosch. The contribu tors draw attention to different illustrations, changing visual rhetoric, and evolving compo sitions, for example, while they also critically reflect the social implications in the reproduction of classics. The fact that reeditions of classics are often characterized by a "modifying re-turn" is shown by Mareile Oetken in her essay "Vom Märchenwald in den Großstadtdschungel. Traditionslinien und Brüche in der Märchenillustration" ("From Fairy-Tale Forest to Urban Jungle. Traditions and Transgressions in Fairy Tale Illustration"). Based on picturebooks by Aaron Frisch and Roberto Innocenti, Alfonso Serra, and Kvĕta Pacovská, among others, she points out how, on the one hand, new images echo traditional fairy tale illustrations, but on the other hand, they clearly undermine and redefine them. Frisch and Innocenti's version of Little Red Riding Hood shows that they choose an urban setting instead of the traditional forest; they also initially retain the ambiguity of the wolf, but then opt for a "consistent exaggeration to transform the evil into the tragic and celebrate the harmony of the happy ending in a very different way" (42). While time is a major factor in the metamorphosis of classics illustration, a contribution such as Svenja Blume's "Wo steht die Villa Kunterbunt? Pippi Langstrumpfs Bildwelten" ("Where Is the Villa Villekulla? Pippi Longstocking's Pictorial Worlds") also addresses the entanglement of temporal and geographical parameters that come into play when classics are translated. Here, in addition to changing conceptions of childhood, images of the self and of others also play a role—something that becomes apparent when Katrin Engelking stages a Swedish "Bullerbü idyll' in her recent Pippi illustrations from 2007 (234f.). There is no doubt that national and sometimes also nostalgically motivated pictorial traditions play just as much a role as more general mental and sociocultural patterns and concepts. The individual contributions all show that it is precisely the interplay of text and image that "etches itself into memory" and is able to fascinate and inspire generations—even if quite a few older illustrations do not always or no longer correspond to the current common sense. Nevertheless, the fifteen image- and text-based analyses of this edited volume clearly demonstrate that the power of classics lies not least in the fact that they are repeatedly reinterpreted [End Page 96] and adapted and thus brought "into the present." Ines Galling International Youth Library Copyright © 2021 Bookbird, Inc.