Children’s book
Publisher:
Kagge
Illustrator:
Lisa Aisato
Release year:
2023
“A little too smooth”
See all reviews
So what about “Year Time Quartet”, the children’s book series Maja Lunde creates in collaboration with illustrator Lisa Aisato? Both “Snøsøsteren” (2018) and “Solvokteren” (2020) were each beautiful and inviting books in their own way. The commercial success of the first book was referred to as a Harry Potter effect; it was sold to more than 20 countries. The publisher made sure to sign a contract with the women authors, which involves four seasonal books. And now the summer book, “The Windmaker”, is here.
Blue summer
It is again a masterpiece, tempting for all grandparents to put under the Christmas tree. This is not least due to Terese Moe Leiner’s stylish design. It is an exquisite “coffee table book” for people who don’t even drink coffee, i.e. children. It is so delicious and luxurious that some will probably ask the target group to wash their sticky hands before use.
Where the “Snow Sister” was red and the “Solvokteren” green, the “Windmaker” has taken blue from the color palette. Completely in line with the story, which is packed with summer, wind, sea and blue sky. Lisa Aisato’s illustrations are, as always, magnificent and atmospheric. It’s almost like you hear the seagulls’ screams and smell the fishing nets from her drawings. She mirrors the mood when she lets an anxious little boy lie down under a bedspread shaped like a whimsical wave, or lets the sun from a window illuminate old family photographs on a wall. She creates effective contrasts between the light and the dark.
BLUE: The main character Tobias is sitting on a bedspread shaped like a strange wave. Illustration: Lisa Aisato Show more
The yearbooks are independent; there is no connection between the stories except that they follow a familiar and beloved children’s book formula: a child who is struck by some kind of tragedy and then overcomes it and makes everyone happy in the end. There is nothing wrong with stencils if you manage to use them for something exciting or thought-provoking. Maja Lunde has been creatively “different” in the first two books, where the first had the form of a Christmas calendar, while the second joined a children’s book tradition that crosses the threshold of a magical, secret world.
Too much of the good
Nameless War
In “Windmakeren” there is surprisingly little magic in the wind. The main character is 11-year-old Tobias Whim, a war child who will be sent out into the countryside to fatten up after the end of the war. He says a tearful goodbye to his parents at the railway station, to spend the summer holidays with a number of other children on Værøy, a place he has never heard of, but where there is supposedly an abundance of vegetables from the fields, berries from the forest and fish from the sea. Tobias has gone to bed every night with a rumbling, rumbling stomach, and this is what he leaves behind:
“We drove through a landscape of ruined buildings, piles of bricks, in some places I could make out half apartments, a chair tipped on the edge of what had been a house, in a kitchen split in two, an abandoned cup on a table, burnt curtains, a staircase leading to nowhere.”
PORTRAITS MISERABILITY: But the author could have been more specific in his description, believes book reviewer Inger Bentzrud. Illustration: Lisa Aisato Show more
The war, that is. These are the images we see on TV every day from cities in Ukraine. But Maja Lunde’s war is completely without context. No information about time or place is given here. Is Tobias in post-war Norway, in the Balkans or where? After all, war is not something that just falls from the sky. War is about enemies, hatred, aggression, abuse, death. Even children have caught on. An 11-year-old boy in Sarajevo, Gaza or Kherson would probably have a more pronounced relationship with the recently ended war than Tobias in “The Windmaker”. It is conceivable that Maja Lunde will spare her young readers offensive details, but reducing “war” to a form of suitable backdrop makes the story unnecessarily toothless, I think.
Tear up painful wounds
Cross fisher
More prominent in the plot is Tobias’ relationship with his host on the summer island; a stubborn and reluctant fisherman who lives alone in a stone house with steep cliffs down to the sea. Her name is Lothe, and she has a closed room in the attic full of paintings and children’s drawings. Lothe carries a secret that must be exceptionally painful, we understand, and it must be Tobias’ task to crack the code and restore a harmony that has been buried for many years.
Professional Maja Lunde knows exactly which buttons to press to evoke the sentimental pages of the story. She writes vividly and well. And even though the result is an aesthetic experience, I can’t shake the feeling that it will be a little too smooth this time. A bit too kind and afraid of conflict.
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2023-09-18 22:10:13
#Toothless #Magnificent #Book
